The U.S. should legalize all drugs

I advocate a Harm Reduction approach to psychoactive substances; its more effective to make drugs not harmful rather than make futile attempts to prevent their usage. I would allow drugs to be purchased legally which enables a regulated approach to the issue.1. Drug overdoseFrom 1979 - 1998, there were a claimed 44,747 deaths due to illegal drugs (1). 86% of these deaths are due to overdose on heroin and cocaine. So solve overdose, and solve drug-related deaths. According to HarmReduction.org, most fatal overdoses are due to mixing drugs together (2). It is actually not common knowledge that doing so is fatal; people will not voluntarily take Ecstasy and Heroin together if they know it will hospitalize them. Unfortunately, the excessive taboo on psychoactive substances prevents us from saying anything knowledgeable about them to the public, like don't take two drugs at the same time. Legalization removes this taboo, and when the now legal drugs are purchased, we can put a giant sticker on the bottle saying that taking this substance with any other drug will cause fatal injury. Additionally, the media and private doctors could also reiterate this message, thus strongly discouraging users from taking multiple drugs at once. This removes a large portion of overdose deaths and saves thousands. For many drug users, especially newer users, injecting or snorting the correct amount of the substance can be complicated. Its not like that plastic bag of crack the dealer gave you has any instructions on it. New drug users can easily be thrown into a guessing game as to how much substance to take, or how to even take it correctly. This is another cause of overdose; not understanding correct dosages or injection procedure. Users can easily take too much of the drug by accident on their first few tries and become gravely ill, or worse. Legalization solves this completely, by allowing correct dosage amounts and procedure to be posted on the container. This is what drugs would be if legalized (3), and this is the status quo (4). I ask the judges to consider which of these is safer and more preferable.2. Adulterated substancesThe current system also puts drug sales in the hands of underground, cop-evading dealers who have no commitment to honesty or safety. Dealers often mix dangerous substances in with the drugs to dilute it. Melanie Gordon writes, "Illegal drugs are extremely dangerous. You rarely...can trust the person who is selling them. You also dont know what other substances have been mixed in with the drug. Often drug dealers mix an illegal drug with another substance so that they can have more product to sell. For example, a dealer might mix cocaine with talcum powder, sugar, or even another cheaper drug. If you use illegal drugs you simply cannot be sure of what substances you are putting into your body." (5)This creates the concept of purity. Because so many dealers adulterate their drugs, it becomes less pure. According to DrugScope, most street-drug amphetamines have less than 10% purity, while cocaine is anywhere from 20-90%, heroin is 30-80%, and ecstasy is usually riddled with a variety of substances that aren't MDMA (6).This furthers the risk of overdose when drugs are illegal. When the strength of the drug can vary so much, its easy to take too little or too much of the drug because its unclear as to how pure it is. If you're used to taking crack that has 50% purity, then you get crack with 80% purity and take the same amount (because you obviously can't know its strength changed), then boom, you're in the hospital for overdosing. Then prison. Or, if the new drug is actually 30% pure, then it will be weaker than usual causing you to take more. Then boom, you're in the hospital and prison again.Remember, drugs have this problem because its underground dealers selling them rather than legal regulations, which would post the ingredient list and correct dosage amount...Also, sometimes street drugs are cut with dangerous chemicals which cause more drug-related deaths. Elizabet Kaa writes, "Identification of potentially dangerous substances contaminating illicit drugs is important because these substances might be more toxic than the drug itself. For example, cocaine adulterated with atropine [6] or phenytoin [7] are examples of dangerous mixtures sold on the European drug market."Also go back to source 6, which shows that some drugs are adulterated with paracetamol, an over-the-counter painkiller. If users are taking other prescription medications for whatever reason, the illegal drug user would indirectly be mixing two prescription drugs together without even knowing it, which is also dangerous or fatal. Legalization solves all of this by regulating the content of what is sold. Legal companies will be held accountable for impure or adulterated substances, and this would basically eliminate any threat of contamination in the now-legal drugs.3. AIDSAbout 1.8 million people died from AIDS in 2009 (8), and a lot of this is from drug users having to share the same injection needles. Because clean needles aren't widely available due to drug use being so taboo, addicts are forced to use each other's repeatedly, which spreads STD. This is the cause of thousands of people dying: "In New York City, 34 percent of all people with AIDS have been heterosexual drug users, who presumably caught the disease by sharing needles and syringes with someone infected by the virus. Nationally, about one-fifth of the more than 36,000 AIDS cases have involved i.v drugs. An accurate estimate is probably double that, since many addicts' deaths from tuberculosis, pneumonia and other illnesses are now being recognized as AIDS-related (9)." This is unacceptable, and preventing these deaths should be a priority. The problem would be solved through legalization, which would allow several "needle-exchange centers" to be created. These are places where drug users can legally acquire clean syringes for little to no cost, eliminating the risk for STD transmission. Several countries already have such a system, but this is near-nonexistent in the United States because of its unnecessary strictness on drug use. A meta-analytical review of previous exchange centers found that the programs are indeed effective at preventing the spread of HIV (10). 4. CartelsThe Mexican drug cartels are a major cause of crime in Mexico, but they also operate in over 195 cities in the United States (11). They are the cause of hundreds of murders and thousands of felonies, and when we arrest them they clog our prisons. The status quo only exacerbates the problem. Putting the cartel's leaders in prison actually makes the problem worse because the cartels will now experience power-struggles for who will become the next kingpin, which has its own casualties. Thus, the status quo is making this country a hotbed for organized crime.Legalizing drugs would prevent cartels from operating in our country. The legal sale of drugs would compete them out of business, driving all of them out of the United States. If this is effective at reducing crime, Mexico may be encouraged to follow suit, as they've lost tens of thousands of lives to their drug war. That would prevent even more crime from taking place and bring benefits to an international scale.1. http://www.briancbennett.com...2. http://www.harmreduction.org...3. http://shopgala.com...4. http://sydlexia.com...5. http://books.google.com...6. http://www.drugscope.org.uk...7. http://tinyurl.com...8. http://www.avert.org...9. http://www.thenation.com...10 http://tinyurl.com...11. http://patdollard.com...