Drug legalization

"That's just simply not true. For example, look at cigarettes, they are everywhere........." And illicit drugs aren't? The problem with the cigarette comparison is that 1) cigarettes can be consumed "on the job" in a way that most illicit drugs cannot thus increasing their consumption relative to other drugs. 2) Cigarettes have never been illegal so its impossible to say whether or not their legality is responsible for their popularity. 3) The consequences of cigarette use generally don't come into play until one has been smoking them for a very long time, thus there is little direct incentive to quit until its too late. Regarding the legal availability of drugs, the thing is that people are doing these drugs anyway regardless! Having them be illegal has not prevented people from using drugs. Nothing short of creating a complete police state will prevent drugs from being used. The fact that cigarettes kill people is irrelevant to the argument at hand. Marijuana has never killed a soul yet it remains illegal. The percentage of people who die as a direct result of drug use is staggeringly low relative to the number of people who have used them. This is true for all drugs, including crack cocaine and methamphetamine. There is absolutely no factual basis for your claim that the ridding of drug-crime related violence would be offset by more people dying because they chose to use drugs. By legalizing drugs, no one would be forced to ever use them anyway. Just as I choose not to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol I could choose not to use "hard" drugs. How many people choose not to do hard drugs (drugs that could potentially kill someone, i.e. not marijuana, shrooms, LSD, MDMA) just because they are illegal? For me, and I would imagine a majority of others, the illegality of drugs is pretty low on the list of reasons I have for not doing them. In 1999, 3.7 million Americans used cocaine and 4,864 people overdosed on it. That amounts to 0.13%. Of all the people who's ONLY rational for not doing cocaine is that its illegal, only one out of 769 will die as a result of an overdose should it become legal, assuming the conditions that lead to overdoses remain constant (doubtful). The number of people who's lives would be saved as a result of the dismantling of the black market for cocaine would easily trump that figure. A studied showed that 4% of people who have done heroin in their lifetime had used it in the past month. Using basic reasoning one can conclude that this means that more than 96% of heroin users either don't become addicted or are able to survive and rid themselves of the habit. It also forces us to conclude that less than 4% of heroin users die from it. So that means that if heroin were legalized, less than 4% of people who's ONLY rational for not using heroin is its illegality would die, probably even far less than that considering that uncertain purity leads to a large proportion of heroin ODs. Again, no one would be forced into using drugs. The only people who would use drugs who other-wise wouldn't are those who's only rational for not using is that they are illegal. How many people do you think make up that demographic? After all, I still wouldn't use drugs except for maybe the occasional joint, I know that no one in my family would suddenly decide to use drugs, I'm sure you would still choose not to use drugs, so I can't imagine very many people would suddenly decide they want to use hard drugs simply because there would no longer be legal consequences for doing so. Hell, for the VAST majority of drug users, there are already no legal consequences--most people who use drugs simply know how to safely acquire them without there being a change of getting arrested. Regarding the price of drugs, yes the price of drugs themselves would fall if they were legalized. I would add, however, that whether or not--or how much--of this change in price would be passed on to the drug users themselves would depend on how much the government taxes them. Even if the government decided to keep the price of drugs lower than they are currently on the street, an argument can certainly be made that this would reduce drug-related crime. A company that sells bike-locks refuses to insure them in Eugene (where I go to school) solely because of the number of meth addicts that steal bikes in the city to support their habit. Generally speaking, lower drug prices leads to a reduction in theft and other crimes that help addicts support their habit.