The War on Drugs is a failure

I want to sincerely thank my debate partner for a quick yet engaging contest. I feel that he has conducted himself well, and has provided the readers with a perspective that is not often seen. For my part, I have enjoyed the exercise, and regret somewhat its speedy conclusion. It has been my task here to defend the WoD against the assertion that it has been an abject failure. As a peripheral goal, my partner and I seem to have also trended toward a consideration of what the entirely unpredictable consequences of full “pharmacological anarchism” (as I, bemusedly, would call it) might be. My task here was fairly simple: defend drug laws from the claim that they are entirely ineffective. It’s seldom a difficult task, defending any particular thing from such a polemic attack, but I am not unrelieved to learn that the chore was not more difficult. I am, after all, a relentless critic of the WoD, and a more or less hopeful watcher that marijuana laws might one day be ended. Not because of any particular medicinal need that I have; but because I would enjoy getting stoned into the astral plane. This debate might have broken my heart to argue, were it not for a critical rhetorical error made by my partner: he has continued to maintain that drug users are entirely unable to be governed. This requires any dispassionate observer to conclude that, in order to maintain public governance, our society must prevent drug addiction.I say again. Our society will always attempt to control drug addiction. It makes little difference if we call the collection of laws that govern this phenomenon the "War on Drugs," or "Drug Laws" or what. The thing that is important is that they cannot be got rid of. Society will always enjoy to right to defend itself against whatever; the best argument against some drug law or another always is: "this drug is safe." At the end, my partner has never attempted to make the case that the entire legal code itself cannot be obeyed, or that most laws are pointless due to the inevitable miscreant. He has waved off any discussion of running red lights in a traffic lawless alternate universe, as well he should - the idea is absurd. It was not his case that every law is pointless, since any particular law will be eventually violated. It is his case that specifically drug laws are pointless, that addicts cannot be controlled by them, and therefore, the drug laws should be abolished. It is assumed that this would work better, and I agree; what can stop illegal behavior faster than legalizing that behavior? I'm being facetious. I oughtn't. But my partner has a point. A face-eating bathsalter might harm no one but himself. He may be an entirely sane, loving and funny man who loves puppies – until he gets bathsalty and eats the face from some reluctant passer by. We can assume that the face eater’s girlfriend is honest when she says that this is unusual for him; we are also safe in the assumption that he is entirely out of his mind once sufficiently seasoned. This is one part of the point: society cannot allow a proliferation of face-eaters. As these face-eaters are to be considered mad, and entirely unsafe to be near – much less reasoned with – we must do what we can to prevent their transformation from gentle boyfriend to bathsalted face-eater. Inasmuch as the WoD has reduced this menace, it has been less than a dismal failure. Likewise, we do not want drunks driving upon the same sidewalks as we instruct our children on the sport of cycling sans-training wheels. I argue that it is reasonable that we place restrictions upon such things – and we should rightfully consider the causes of such things as well. If we have determined that there are dangerous narcotics that can inspire peculiar and unwanted behavior, then these narcotics should be banned. That they may also harm the users is a side point, but an important one for the families of these people. Inasmuch as drug laws (the totality of which we term “the War on Drugs”) provides us with the tools that we need to properly manage society (and to predict the actions of salty-looking passers by), then we should support at least some elements of it. My partner has argued that the WoD should be named a “failure,” and entirely disposed of. The crux of his argument is that, once addicted, these people cannot be controlled by laws. Therefore, he reasons, these laws might as well be abandoned. I counter that they should at least be modified first, that there are redeeming elements to be found in our attempts to regulate these substances. It is not un-ironic that our reasoning is identical… I grudgingly endorse drug laws for the same reason that he opposes them. Because, once addicted, these people cannot be controlled by laws.