1st DDO Census Debate: Drug Legalization

DK agreed in PM that the definition for "recreational use" is "any non-medical use." We also agreed that I would waive the final round. Having said that, onto my arguments. I'm copying this round from my previous drug debate:I love drugs. If you read my DDO profile, you'll learn that I eat healthy and exercise regularly (i.e. I take great care of my body) precisely so that I can use hard drugs with minimal repurcussions. I've dropped, eaten, smoked, and snorted everything from MDMA to heroin. I even did meth once (never felt so speedy in my life). And thanks to a combination of all these drugs, I learned to seethe with the cosmos.I've learned more from drugs than anything else. In particular, drugs have taught me a profound sense of humility, that I'm not in total control, that my ideas and vision and even body don't always operate the way I want. And I've learned how to seethe with the universe, swell with its cosmic tides, surf and drown and frolic in its terrestrial waves. It's good to be 16, tripping on acid and seeing the invisible textures of the universe. And it's good to be 19 and so lit that you can smell the stars.These experiences prepare us for a beautiful life. They teach you that life isn't defined by your job, it's defined by your relationship with the universe. In the words of Rich Doyle, drugs teach us to be ecodelic. And that applies at all stages of your life, no matter your age—drugs break the constraints of habit, anxiety, and dread. The vast majority of drug users have positive experiences with no downside.Of course, unless you've done lots of drugs, you probably don't know how educational and life-changing they are. So for anyone unsure about the positive effect of proper drug use, let me explain why the government shouldn't be in the business of interfering with personal decisions about using drugs.Individuals should have all the freedom they want to pursue their own views of the good life—up to the point where an unwilling person could be harmed. This idea is captured by John Stuart Mill's "harm principle," which holds that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” Freedom thus ends only where the next person’s nose begins.There's two justifications for this limiting principle. First, it gives our government political legitimacy. In a "state of nature," no political authority exists; individuals are free to do whatever they want. The only reason people give up some of that freedom is to be protected from being harmed by others. This establishes a limit on legitimate government interference.Second, the harm principle maximizes utility because it lets individuals weigh the costs and benefits of incommensurate goods subjectively (e.g. weighing pleasure from drugs vs health risks). Concepts like pleasure are inherently subjective, so the best way to maximize them is by letting individuals weigh them subjectively, as long as those actions don't harm anyone else.Under the harm principle, the government's job isn't to ensure people make smart decisions. Nobody should be punished for hurting their own mind or body. That's why suicide is legal. And if suicide is legal, so too should drugs be legal. And it doesn't matter if a particular drug is self-destructive—its use has no effect on anyone but the person using the drug. This puts drugs firmly outside the scope of legitimate government control. The United States should therefore legalize all drugs no matter how self-destructive it is. And the usual responses—that consuming drugs isn't entirely self-regarding, and that the costs of legalization outweigh the benefits—aren't compelling. First, drug use is inherently self-regarding. It has no affect on anyone but the person consuming the drug. Any harms related to drug use are caused by the circumstances in which a user consumes drugs, not the drugs themselves. The issue, then, is the circumstances surrounding consumption, not drug use itself.Second, the costs of drug prohibition outweigh the benefits twice over. In particular, prohibition causes the following harms:(1) Consuming drugs becomes extremely dangerous because of the potential to suffer poisoning from an adulterated batch, or to overdose because a batch is more pure than believed.(2) Street drugs are easily available to children.(3) Dealers charge monopoly prices, so addicts can't spare money for anything else. This drives addicts to homelessness, prostitution, or property crime, simply to afford the drugs.(4) In drug-dominated neighborhoods, people experience a significant deterioration in the quality of life, which disproportionately harms poorer Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Also, consider the race issue here in terms of the mass incarceration of young (usually recent high school dropouts) drug dealers and drug addicts.(5) The higher-ups in gangs and drug cartels reap enormous profits. In turn, these illicit drug profits fund terrorism and increase the risk of state failure: "drug revenues support insurgents, other armed non-state actors, and corrupt officials, while counternarcotic efforts create hostility to state power." [1](6) In Mexico, drug gangs use advanced military equipment (often better than the army's), have taken over local governments, and some towns have even become uninhabitable. Tens of thousands of individuals have been violently killed, a number greater than the combined deaths of American and allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a considerable number of children and other innocent bystanders. [1](7) Mexicans fleeing the drug violence have been entering the United States illegally. This has created an immigration problem. (It even gave Donald Trump something to talk about, which links to the risk of Trump winning the election).(8) The most dangerous harms are those we can't predict ahead-of-time. For example, a major cost of heroin prohibition was the rapid spread of HIV through drug injecting before anyone knew what was going on. Or consider the changes in inner-city drug trade as a result of the crack trade in the 90s, specifically the increase in gang violence, gun prevalence, and so on. Prohibited markets are unpredictable. And that has major risks on public health (e.g. HIV), crime (e.g. gang violence), and other social issues we simply can't predict.In effect, drug prohibition inflicts more harm to people in our cities, states, countries, and the world than drugs ever will. And each of these harms are eliminated or significantly reduced in a legalized regime. On top of that, legalization creates a number of other benefits:(1) Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, estimates that legalization will reduce government expenditures by $41.3 billion per year. The savings involve reductions in police expenditures, in judicial expenditures, and in prison expenditures. In addition, Miron estimates that legalization will increase tax revenues by $46.7 billion per year, assuming conservatively that demand for drugs doesn't increase, with a tax rate similar to that on alcohol. The total boom to our economy is thus about $88 billion per year. And that calculation doesn't even take into account the potential income tax on legal drug dealers. [2](2) Law-abiding citizens who wouldn't abuse drugs will finally be free to use drugs responsibly, reaping all the benefits of drug use without any of the harms.(3) Legalization will indirectly increase high school graduation rates, because it would reduce illegal opportunities for dropouts.(4) There's still the possibility for individual states to prohibit or penalize drug use, which lets states test different policies (i.e. states as laboratories).The facts show that drug prohibition has been the biggest failed policy in the history of our country; the benefits of legalization significantly outweigh the harms. And luckily legalization isn't just supported by the facts, it also aligns with the central value underlying our government: individual liberty. For all these reasons, vote Pro.Sources1. Mark Kleiman, "Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know"2. http://www.cato.org...