All drugs should be legalized.

Thank you Harboggles for your prompt response, I'll try my best to rebut your arguments clearly and coherently. We'll go in numerical order. 1. Harboggles claims that a Black Market does not exist for items that are legalized, and as such there would be no black market for drugs if they were legalized. However, this argument falls short in two ways: 1) he ignores my example of gun trafficking despite the legality of firearms that I presented in round 1, and 2) his argument that we could tax drug sales which is a positive thing essentially means that we are happily benefitting and making money off of depraved addicts, desperate for a fix. How is this a good thing? 2. Harboggles argues that all drugs, including Crack and Heroin, are not dangerous in the short term. This is absurd. While I agree that a hit of Marijuana might not entail an immediate degradation of personal standards and well-being, I think that hard drugs like heroin are extremely harmful, even if taken only once. In fact, heroin is so dangerous because that first time is the initial high, and every fix after is an effort to return to the high of the first time. Not only that, but drugs like heroin and Crack create real, physical addictions. It's not about a psychological habit, it's about a body being hijacked by a drug and responding with real and dangerous withdrawal symptoms. As such, I argue that hard drugs are DEFINITELY harmful in the short term, and since the resolution concerns the legalization of all drugs as a whole, we are forced to negate. 3. My opponent argues that the war on drugs as it has been executed today has been a waste of money, and that the money should go instead to rehabilitation of addicts. He also argues that drug legislation should be less harsh on casual users. Let me just put it out there that I agree 100% with these statements. I think that drug legislation as of now has been laughably inept, and that more money should go into helping those with real addictions as opposed to locking up people who like to smoke a joint now and then. This being said, none of his 3rd point is an argument for the legalization of drugs. It is a criticism of drug legislation, criticism that I agree with, but it's not a reason that we should legalize all drugs. 4. Harboggles brings up the argument that habitual use of a certain substance is not necessarily an addiction. He claims that only a small amount of drug users are psychologically motivated to abuse substances, and that the rest should not be punished for that. First of all, it's not true that only a small amount of drug users do so for psychological reasons (what does that even mean, anyway? ). Hard drugs, like heroin, crack, cocaine, and Chrystal Meth are all psychologically and physically addictive. This means that it's not habitual use, it's not a hobby, it's a lifestyle, a depressing, depraved, and painful lifestyle. Harboggles is trying to compare the use of cocaine and heroin to a normal hobby, like chess or soccer. This is obviously a false comparison. 5. Harboggles provides links to various sites that seem to offer some kind of evidence that, in fact, marijuana can have beneficial effects on human health. Let me just say that it's funny that he does this, because at the start of his round 1 argument he says: "1. Quote research 2. Don't use propoganda" Not only did Harboggles not quote the research, he provided links to sites like cannabisculture. com or medicalmarijuanablog. com or foxnews. com. Granted, a few of the links are reputable sources, like WebMD, and in that article the positive aspects of marijuana are explored. This is fine. Marijuana being a wonder-drug does not mean that we should legalize crack cocaine and heroin. Sure, maybe we should legalize weed. That is not the resolution that we are debating. 6. Harboggles restates his argument that black markets would not exist for drugs " because the quality, availability, and price would be fair. " Um, how does he know this based on the scope of our debate? First of all, that's an awful lot of speculation. Second of all, he ignores my example of gun trafficking despite its legality. Again. My opponent closes his argument with some anecdotal evidence: he introduces us to Norm Stamper, a veteran of the Seattle Police Department. Great, but does he really think this constitutes an argument? I could present a million-and-one anti-drug advocates, all police chiefs and attorney generals and judges, who oppose the legalization. Would this be a valid argument? Of course not. Don't be fooled by Harboggle's misguided rhetoric.