The War on Drugs is unconstitutional, immoral, and a complete failure

1)Yes I could bring up the numbers, for example, we have spent over a billion dollars on the WoD this year. Keep in mind that this year has only had seven days in it so far(as of 01-07-08). A billion a week is a LOT of money; I make 20 grand a year and it would take me fifty thousand years of waiting tables to pay off how much money the WoD spends every week. And no, if drugs were decriminilized, we would NOT be spending this money ANYWAY. There is nothing wrong with using your vote to forward your favorite cause. I have no arguments against your right to vote. I do have arguments against the effectiveness of the WoD. You need to first show that the WoD is actually helping people stay off drugs, before you assert that you are protecting yourself from junkies by supporting it, ESPECIALLY if you are going to say that you are voting for it to save money for the health care system. Obviously, your financial arguments are not going to stand, and that is before I factor in the taxes we lose on keeping drugs illegal, and the amount of money (think of how much money all the junkies in the country spend on expensive illegal drugs. An eight of an ounce of cocaine has a street value of around $150) that we throw into other countries that make the drugs for our junkies to use. 2)My original premise that started this exchange, not to be confused, was "We will have to make due with punishing individuals after the fact that hurt people while under the influence of mind-altering substances". You countered with "I don't think the argument that arresting drug users based on their potential for harm is bad is valid". Then I refuted your examples, in which you are now modifying so that I cannot find a fallacy in them this time. Of course the police should question him, not because of his potential harm, but because he is already violating gun control laws. You see, the police are not taking the initiative on behalf of potential harm; they are still only arresting someone who is breaking the law. If the man has a carry permit like you say, then he is fine, but I highly doubt there are carry permits that allow this. This argument is becoming extremely tangented and extremely dependent on gun control laws, and I will try to bring us back on track here. I was making a comparison to drunk driving, in which alcohol is legal but you are responsible for the consequences of your actions that are immoral (drunk driving). It sounded really good to people back in the twenties, to take your arguments and apply them to alcohol. Look what happened. Being high while driving is not what I am defending, and I think that if drugs were legal, people who are pulled over who are inebriated, and cannot pass the police's coordination tests, should be arrested, plain and simple. You see, there exists a double-standard in our society with drugs and alcohol. Double-standards are illogical. To rectify the double-standard, there are only two options. Prohibition or decriminalization. We tried prohibition with alcohol. People that disagree with me got their way, and failed miserably. Of course, we have forgotten about that already. The only option here, logically, is decriminalization. You cannot make the argument that drugs are any more dangerous than alcohol, or you will be making a BIG mistake. The man walking down the street, high on cocaine, is not breaking the law, and should be left alone. Yes, he needs to attack someone, before the police act. That is the law, and not up for debate between you and I. Opiates tend towards violence? What's your evidence for that? Is that like in reefer madness when the guy takes a hit from the joint, and then goes insane and kills some people? Sounds like it! Please present me some evidence, from a reputable, scholarly source such as a journal, that this is true. Please don't bring me some propaganda from the partnership for a drug free america or something like that which thinks that, since drugs are inherently immoral, they can say whatever they want in the interest of family values. We have no laws prohibiting BEING high on drugs, only possessing and distributing them. No, those ends don't justify those means. I fail to see how you can use that to defend yourself against my argument, and I fail to see how you can say that I am using my ends to justify my means. I am saying that the WoD is using immoral means to justify its ends, and your argument here is not addressing that at all. 3)Your points here are well argued, but again, you are missing my point. Laws are based on morality and justice. Why? Morality and justice are absolute. When you hurt someone, no one can argue it is not immoral. When you are unfair to someone, no one can argue that you are not unjust. You would introduce personal values(or group values, even) to use as grounds to lay down the law. This is a BAD mistake Tarzan, because now you are on the road to tyranny. Values are not absolute, like morality and justice are, and if the gov't is able to pass laws based simply on their values, then we are in big trouble. What are your values? Being in bed by 11pm? Giving money to charity? No pre-marital sex? A good, Christian upbringing? These are all great, but NOT GROUNDS FOR MAKING LAWS. A king could make laws based on his values, but a congress should not have that power. I am totally bypassing your argument "whose values do we use", because I am saying that NO ONES values should be used. That should end that mystery for you. Social contract is an elegant theory, but using it against me to refute my points(the WoD is unconstitutional, immoral, failure) is not logical. The majority may agree with you, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the majority is right. If our argument was whether I should be able to use drugs right now, while they are illegal, then I guess you would have me on social contract theory. 1)I say the WoD is expensive, and you say "Lots of drugs that would be on the streets lowering the price for the consumer are now in the hands of the government". I seem to be missing your point. 2)I outline the injustices against non-violent drug users, and you say "good... let's put them in rehab". Let me ask you, Tarzan, are you perfect? Are there things about you, that if I knew you better, I could use against you in such a callous manner? Maybe you speed in your Ford Probe too much, cheated on a test in school, were unfaithful to a girlfriend... and if there were politicians in the gov't, whose values specifically discriminated against your personal faults, you could be arguing against ME for YOUR basic human rights, while I say "Good. You're in jail, let's work on rehabilitating you out of these nasty habits." A genuine attempt at empathy is in order here, and remember that whats goes around, comes around. You will stand in judgement some day, for some reason, and your ability to exercise sound judgement on issues like this will greatly improve your ability to deal with any attacks on your personal liberties in the future. 3)again, I have no quarrels with adult-age requirements, so I would assume we are in agreement on this point? 4)Your abilities, as an employer, to screen job applicants should not be unlimited. It takes a skill to be able to identify good workers, and you have a limited set of tools to work with. You have no business knowing a lot of things about potential employees, and I don't have to outline them here to make my point. Suffice to say, if a drug user gets his life back together and works hard to get into a new job, he shouldn't have to deal with a values-based law infraction on his application. You have drug-screening abilities anyway, at almost ALL jobs nowadays, that can determine if the employee still uses. Some drugs cannot be tested for, granted, but it is obvious that we should be erring on the side of justice, in other words, erring on the side of the least possible abuse of justice. I would say that an employees right to privacy