Drug Legalization.

My opponent claims the drug war costs a lot of money by citing statistics claiming that a large percentage of people in jail are there because of drug use. This is a perfect example how statistics have been either purposely (or accidentally) used in order to convince people—good people—like my opponent to support a certain viewpoint. If you look at the actual data, the majority of drug users in jail (83%) have a past criminal record—which is often violent—which tells us most drug users in jail are not the passive marijuana smokers the drug lobby paints them out to be. Two thirds of those 83% also have had multiple past convictions indicating they have long lists of past crimes. Marijuana accounted for only 13% of arrested drug offenders. Indeed, first time offenders held in prison *only* for marijuana possession is 0.3% of the inmate population. A study on Federal Prisons finds the vast majority of people in jail for ‘drug related’ crimes were there because of trafficking, not use. Only 2.3% were in prison only for drug possession. The vast majority of people in prison for drug offenses are not because they are users, but because they traffic drugs or are caught with drugs after committing a violent crime [1. . http://www.dea.gov...]. Even assuming my opponent’s numbers are true, 5 billion dollars for the entire country is extremely small. The budget from combatting drugs is about 11.5 billion dollars per year including enforcement costs which my opponent’s analysis does not include. But this is actually insignificant. The budget for welfare is 0.5 trillion dollars. In fact, drug spending does not even show up on the list of major contributors to the entire budget, which by the way is 6.2 trillion dollars per year [2. . http://www.usgovernmentspending.com...]. When you really break it down, protection (which would include the drug war costs) prisons only cost 81.3 billion dollars—which dwarfs in comparison to 6.2 trillion dollars. Protection in total (which has prisons, policing, and a lot more) is only 4% of the entire budget [3. . http://www.usgovernmentspending.com...]. As noted drug war spending is only about 11.5 billion dollars per year. That means the drug war is only 0.18% of the entire budget this year—hardly a debt reducing tactic by legalization. It should be noted legalization may increase many costs due to the fact drug use will increase. Criminologist James Q. Wilson argues drug legalization will decrease costs of the drug, leading to an “increase the number of users; this increase will be permanent… and many aspects of society will be profoundly impacted by the drug-incapacitated persons [including more welfare, broken families, and traffic deaths]. ” [4. . http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu...] Thus, it is very possible that the costs will actually incase if we legalize drugs as we will have to pay for the increased drug use as a result of legalization. It really does make sense that legalization would lead to more use. Legalization would cause prices to fall as there would be less of a cost (e. g. avoiding the police) when transporting drugs, and many legal ways to obtain drugs will sprout up around the country. The RAND institute argues, “Legalized cocaine would cost no more than about three percent of today's black market price, and consumption would surely increase dramatically. ” [5. . http://www.rand.org...] The National Bureau of Economic Research has found in its research on medical marijuana legalization, “legalization increased both marijuana use and marijuana abuse/dependence in people 21 or older … People 12 to 20 years old were 5 to 6 percent more likely to try marijuana for the first time when medical use was legalized. ” [6. . http://www.nber.org...] NBER also has found, “higher fines and longer jail times were consistently associated with reduced cannabis prevalence. ” [7. . http://www.nber.org...] My opponent states, “If anything, we should use that funding for rehab centers for hard drug addicts. ” I agree. But this does not mean we should legalize drugs. Legalization would lead to a dramatic spike in drug use and harm society—but the current prohibitory regime does focus too much on the user. The RAND institute also argues, “rather from creative combinations of enforcement and treatment efforts, targeting police efforts to the sellers and markets that do the most social damage, and expanding the use of new enforcement tactics that have proven their efficiency. ” [5] So I actually agree that we should lessen punishments for users and provide treatment but continue enforcement against the distributors in order to reduce use. This argument does not mean we should legalize drugs, but rather that we should mend the system.