Drug Legalization

Rebuttals If drugs were to be legalized, multimillion corporations, which would no doubt be established, would be free to launch mass advertising campaigns promoting these drugs to the entire nation.What is wrong with business and corporations being established. In fact we should be happy, business and corporations drive our economy and drugs will no longer be monopolized by cartels.A staggering number people allow themselves to be put under the influence of legal drugs. Not all of these people are addicts, but the drugs that my opponent believes should be legalized are highly addictive. Imagine the sheer number of people who are very productive citizens becoming encumbered and debilitated by drugs that we currently consider illegal.My opponent statement is based on a fallacy that legalizing drugs will cause more people to take drugs. This fallacy has been proven false. In Portugal they simply decriminalized not even legalized drugs and drug abuse is down 50% (1) and Portugal has the lowest rate of marijuana use in the EU which is 10% what is it in America, 40% (2). With millions under the influence of such drugs that generally cause physical and mental impairment, the nation loses an immense number of potential workforce. Potential doctors, lawyers or entrepreneurs would be crippled by use and abuse. Addiction is not a condition that people chose to have.Keeping drugs illegal would make no difference, people will take drugs no matter what the law says. Despite massive amounts of government spending fighting drugs in America drug addiction has stayed the same (3)Are the few tens of billions of potential profits worth the hundreds of billions lost from potential output of productive people? Drugs destroy productivity and therefore limit the economic output of potentially productive citizens.People will take drugs no matter what the law says the people who have been addicted always been unproductive, if drugs are illegal we are just adding to the cost by enforcing prohibition. During 2000"2004, cigarette smoking was estimated to be responsible for $193 billion in annual health-related economic losses in the United States (nearly $96 billion in direct medical costs and an additional $97 billion in lost productivity)."My opponent brings up economic costs. There is still an economic benefit, the economic costs my opponent talks about have always been there. Look drugs are always going to be in our society because of that we need to tackle this issue in a different manner; instead of imprisoning and spending billions on prohibition the government can take a much cheaper approach and pay for rehab and drug education that is a much sensible way of dealing with drugs.Opium ArgumentI find quite ironic that my opponent is bringing this up because the effects my opponent were talking about is after China made Opium an illegal drug (4)Legalizing illegal drugs would provide an even larger base of drug for the teen consumers. Many of these children, in youthful stupidity or curiosity, have tried legal drugs. A good number of the experimenting teens become ensnared in it these harmful products. Illegal drugs, which are even more harmful and addictive, would give rise to this same problem at a much larger scale. This statement has no substance and is false lets take a look at the facts. Marijuana is the most widely used illegal drug among America’s youth. Among kids age 14-16, 7.2 percent of 14-15 year olds use marijuana, and 15.6 percent of 16-17 year olds use marijuana (5). This will tell you about teen drug use in the Netherlands compared to the U.S. (6). The numbers speak for themselves.Sources: (1)- http://www.globalpost.com...(2)- http://www.time.com...(3)-http://reason.com...(4)- http://www.2020site.org...(5)- http://www.theantidrug.com...(6)- http://www.ukcia.org...