All drugs should be legal

Thanks for this debate :)1. The act of taking drugs does not violate rightsMy opponent begins by stating the reason that civil servants take an oath, and he is correct. My opponent is correct in this regard, if there were no enemies, there would be nothing to protect against. The purpose of the oath of office is to ensure that civil servants will uphold the Constitution and from that "establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty." The point is, the federal government is concerning itself with collective rights, not individual rights. This is why murder is generally not prosectued under federal law, but rather state law. Unless that murder has something to do with collective security (ie, the killing of the president affects more than just the individual, it affects the nation.) The Framers never denied that people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But, the Federal Government concerns itself with protecting the rights of the collective people. The Federal Government deals with society as a whole, not just individuals. The states and municipalites are left to protect the individual.From there, we must ask if it is in the interest of the collective for the Federal Government to legalize drugs. My opponent says yes because while he does not deny the truth of the claim that the emmergence of a drug economy destablizes and eventually destroys an economy, he asserts that since the drug economy already exists underground, legalizing drugs would stabilize the drug economy which in turn would further stabilize society. It is a logical conclusion, but my opponent fails to show how the stablization of the drug economy would stablize society. In order to provide this causal link, we must look within and outside the United States. In 1919 to 1922, the Federal Government handed out free drugs to drug addicts in order to control their behavior. The effor failed simply because it failed. Furthermore, when California, Oregon, and Alaska attempted to decriminalize/legalize marijuana in the 1970s, DUIs increased exponentially and drug use was doubled. (1) Look at the Netherlands, "The city's 7,000 addicts are blamed for 80 percent of all property crime and Amsterdam's rate of burglary is now twice that of Newark, New Jersey." (1) "Dr. K. F. Gunning, president of the Dutch National Committee on Drug Prevention, cites some revealing statistics about drug abuse and crime. Cannabis use among students increased 250 percent from 1984 to 1992. During the same period, shootings rose 40 percent, car thefts increased 62 percent, and hold-ups rose 69 percent." (1) It is immediatley evident that legalization has only increased property crime in European countries. That is not in the interst of the collective by any means. An increase in theft and property damage does not stabilize society by any means.2. The Failure of ProhibitionThe point of prohibition was to decrease alcohol useage. It succeeded. My opponent has conceeded all statistics to that regard that it was a success when it came to public health issues. I also would like to point out that my opponent asserts that prohibition made organized crime much larger, and then uses one, while large and infamous, gangster to make his point. Simply basing your entire case on the earnings of one man seems rather flimsy. No matter how infamous Al Capone may be, he is still just one man.3. More power to gangs/cartelThe legalization of drugs creates market niches. Since undoubtedly there would be restrictions (age, occupation, etc) on who could buy these drugs, those excluded from the legal market would turn to the drug cartels. Who thus, would still exist. Furthermore, my opponent assumes that the legal market for drugs would just pop up over night due to legalization. But, the majority of "hard" drugs such as heroin, cocaine, LSD, crack, etc are used in poorer communites where crime is already present. It's a generally accepted fact that drugs, poverty, and crime all go hand in hand. Even legalizing drugs will not immediatley bring buisness into areas in which most buisness had already left. In poorer areas of crime ridden cities such as Newark, Trenton, and Washington DC, legalizing drug will not correlate with larger buisnesses going into those areas wtihout raising their operating costs. My opponent is making the implicit assertion that this buisness will go to these areas, which are controlled by drug cartels as well as other gangs. Bottom line, my opponent has not supported this assertion.In response to my statistics, my opponent's hypothesis as to why drug use declined was out of fear. Yet, quite simply, this is how the criminal justice system works. What my opponent calls "fear" criminologists would call a detterent. People are dettered from doing X due to punishment Y. This is quite simply the basis of the United States criminal justice system. It has worked in dettering people from using drugs, which, is good according to both my opponent and myself. My opponent also said that the change in policy caused a sharp increase in drug use followed by a decline but, we must keep in mind that even during Clinton's presidency, there were still punishments in place for drug use and drug "dealing." Drugs were not legalized or decriminalized by any degree, it is just less resources were put towards drug interdiction and drug prevention rates. Thus, more drugs flowed into the United States, more people bought and used drugs. In the end, my opponent agrees that a society of non-users would be best, but while it may be an unrealistic ideal, shouldn't we adopt the policy which has shown to be most effective at decreasing drug use which is a prohibition on drugs?4. Users cannot be helped if they are scammedMy opponent changes his hypothetical to assert that a dealer could market their drug as safe while in reality it is incredibly dangerous. My opponent never shows where this marketing is happening. I don't turn on the television and see advertisments for "perfectly safe" cocaine. Also, why would a drug dealer even go down that path and open up questions as to why they are advertising their product and whether it is really safe or not? The reality is, this entire hypothetical is not based in reality. If my opponent wishes to assert that the users are victims, then how can they both argue this and that drug use is connected to a person's right to liberty? In light of my opponent's other philisophical arguments, this one seems to contradict the others.My opponent argues that since other unhealthy products are legalized this should lead to the legalization other unhealthy products. How does this make sense? If good A, B, and C are all unhealthy. A is illegal. B and C are legal, should the government legalize A simply because B and C are legal? It makes no sense to legalize more unhealthy goods which will lead to more lost productivity.1. http://www.sarnia.com...;