New Member Tournament: Drug Legalization

1. Drugs and Crime. I am attempting to show 3 things. 1: The correlation between drug use and crime contains very little causation. 2: Drugs have very little crime inducing effects. 3: The crime inducing effects are balanced out by crime in the illegal drug trade. 1A. The correlation between drug use and crime contains very little causation. "Among Federal prisoners, drug offenders (32%) and violent offenders (24%) were the most likely to report drug use at the time of their crimes. " This is actually the basis of my argument. Drug offenders are usually also criminals because they are a cause from a variety of factors (physiological disorders, poverty, etc). It goes to follow that if you are a drug offender, you are also a criminal, and that if you use drugs you will probably use them on the day you commit your crime (after all, you are a drug offender). For example, in a profile of marijuana users, they found that most of them used marijuana daily[1] (yes, you are not arguing for illegal marijuana. This is just going to show my point), and if they committed a crime they would obviously commit the crime having used marijuana that day. But that does not mean that marijuana caused the crime. 1B. Drugs have very little crime inducing effects. " My Opponent even concedes that "Obviously there will be some who commit crimes due to the effects of drugs"." Exactly. There will be some, but they will be in a minority. The 14% who committed crimes due to the effects of drugs amounted to 30 people in one year. New York is a notoriously dangerous city, and only 30 murders were caused by the effects of drugs. This is NOT grounds to criminalize drugs. In 1998, there was 924 murders. 30, or 3%, were due to the effects of drugs. Very few people actually commit violent crimes due to the effects of drugs. Most violent crimes were committed by people under the influence of alcohol, and those that were drug related were committed by people under the influence of drugs AND alcohol[1]. 1C. The crime inducing effects are balanced out by crime in the illegal drug trade. I decided to check out all of America, and there is almost the exact same ratio as before. There was 111 narcotic induced murders in 2000 and 564 illegal drug trade related murders in 1999[2] Thus, we should expect that murder rates would rise during prohibitions. And that is exactly what we find. The two most violent periods in this century occur during Prohibition and the escalation of the War on Drugs. At the beginning of Prohibition, the murder rate rose from 7 per 100,000 to 9.9. When Prohibition ended in 1933, the murder rate immediately rocketed down from 9.9 to 8 in 2 years. By 1940 it was 6.5, and stayed low until the escalation of the War on Drugs, where it rocketed to 10. It has stayed there, which isn't much of a surprise since the War on Drugs continues[3]. 2. Not the government's role. I will attempt to show that 1: We should not criminalize drugs because it supposedly harms society, 2: My obesity analogy is correct and 3: My car analogy is correct. 2A. We should not criminalize drugs because it supposedly harms society. "drugs cause people to put their time and money to a harmful use." This is completely subjective. Many parents think video games fulfill all of your criteria. Should we also criminalize video games. Who decides that it is harmful? You may think that drugs are harmful, but I think of them as simple recreation. What makes your word more important than mine? My parents think casinos and bars are harmful. Should we ban casinos and bars? All of these have people who think they fulfill all of your criteria. However, none of these harm anyone (except possibly the users). They only thing about these that are harmful is completely subjective. "Drug addiction takes a healthy, rational person, and turns them into a societal dependant." First off, very few people actually turn into drug addicts. A quote: "[it ignores] a body of data showing that most illegal drug users in Canada and elsewhere will never be regular users. It bears repeating that drug use is still, for the most part, a sporadic, recreational, exploratory activity. Most people are able to manage their drug use without any difficulty. Very few will become regular users, and even fewer will develop a drug addiction."[1] Most everything can become addictive. There is a food addicts anonymous[4], video game addicts anonymous[5], adrenaline addicts anonymous[6], and many others. However, most people are not food, video games, or adrenaline addicts. Only a small minority become addicts. All of these things fulfill all of your criteria, and by your logic we must ban all of them because a very small percentage of people abuse them. In addition, you seem to think that it is the government's job to put a gun to everyone's head and tell them how to live because of a supposed benefit to society. Who cares if someone is a societal dependant? Isn't a baby also a societal dependant? 2B. My obesity analogy is correct. I will admit it, I made a small mistake. We should force everyone to go on a diet in order to prevent obesity (even though the obese are a small percentage, though much larger than the percentage of drug addicts) just like we should force everyone to not take drugs in order to prevent drug addiction (even though drug addicts are a tiny percentage of people). 2C. My car analogy is correct. My opponent has attempted to show that it somehow harms everyone around the drug user, though I don't understand. There is not more crime, and it does not blind anyone else. All you have said it does is "turns them into a societal dependent". That does not exactly blind anyone else. Taking drugs does NOT hurt others (when you factor in illegal drug trade related crime). 3. Morality 3A. We should have laws. "He seems to think that it is immoral for the government to criminalize something that harms society. Why? If this is the case, than why have laws at all?" Drugs harming society is 100% subjective at best. The only harm they do to society is "create societal dependents" which isn't something I would really would call harm anyways. However, murder and rape violate people's rights, and preventing that is the government's role. 3B. "Appeals to Oppression" My mistake. It appears that it is a large group trampling over the rights of a small group. Now that there is a majority, everything's good. By the way, isn't a large group of people trampling the rights of a small group of people oppression? 4. Exception "The sole purpose of this drug is to, as the name implies, rape people! " And here is where it fails. This drug is commonly used to "Drugs used to facilitate rape [...] and can be added to a food or drink without the victim's knowledge."[7] If it is used maliciously against another person, then it is violating their rights. If someone really wants to personally consume this, I see no problem at all with it. However, I do see a problem with using it against another person maliciously. An analogy to my opponents argument is "my opponent supports gun rights, thus he must also support people using guns however they want, including murder" Cross-examination Answers 1. I dunno. Does it matter? 2. Yes, to protect peoples rights. 3. It is no longer committing immoral acts, and saves money and lives. There isn't no negatives that outweigh those. Questions 1. Do you support the criminalization of alcohol? It is linked to much more crime than drugs, and has all the other problems you have addressed. Sources [1] http://www.parl.gc.ca... [2] http://www.ncvc.org... [3] http://www.drugwarfacts.org... [4] http://www.foodaddicts.org... [5] http://www.video-game-addiction.org... [6] http://www.adrenalineaddicts.org... [7] http://en.wikipedia.org...