Drug Legalization

Thanks to Danielle for a great debate! In this round I will recap what happened in this debate and emphasize what I consider to be the key points.=Legalization vs. Decriminalization=The debate comes down to which of these competing policies is superior. Danielle totally misrepresents my position when she says: "Both decriminalization and legalization remove criminal penalties from those who make, buy and sell drugs."I was surprised to see her say something so blatantly false given that I had made it repeatedly clear that I was advocating a solution close to the policy Portugal went with--I want *mandatory* rehabilitation for addicts while retaining the laws against manufacturing and selling drugs. And here's the thing about decriminalization: unlike legalization, it has a positive track record. Danielle explained in her first round how Portugal's policy of decriminalization resulted in a substantial decline in drug use, while overdoses decreased to the vanishing point. This is because the supply of drugs is still heavily restricted while users are forced to get the help that they need to beat drug addiction. Decriminalization in Portugal was a huge success by any metric.Legalization has no such successful track record. We know that Alcohol Prohibition cut usage in half. We know that use of Marijuana becomes significantly more common after legalization. With hard drugs we can look to the example of China. Danielle does not dispute the numbers. A staggering 1 in 10 Chinese people ended up addicted to Opium before it was finally stamped out through forced rehabilitation for addicts and severe penalties for dealers--policies similar to what I support. She responds by saying that the Chinese government never regulated the supply of Opium, but her arguments about regulation decreasing the use of addictive substances just aren't convincing. If regulations and taxes would've prevented the Opium epidemic, why is alcohol still used by over half the US population? This is just an attempt to avoid the history of complete failure surrounding drug legalization.Danielle has also made several arguments that hurt her own case. For example, take her argument about alcohol being the worlds most dangerous drug. I think it's pretty obvious that the impact of alcohol is due to incredibly widespread usage--53% of Americans regularly use alcohol compared to 1.5% who use hard drugs. But Danielle never articulated why this matters. So what? How does this affirm the resolution? On the other hand, as I have pointed out it completely destroys all of her arguments about how drug use wouldn't increase. Four times as many Americans use alcohol--a legal drug, regulated drug that she says is worse than heroin or meth--than use the still widely criminalized but safer Marijuana. The ONLY historical example of hard drugs being legal presented in this debate ended with 10% of the population addicted. In the United States, that would amount to around 32 million people. It's difficult to emphasize how trivial 600 drug dealers shooting each other (her biggest impact) is when compared to even the RISK of tens of millions of new addicts. Only 1.5% of the population uses hard drugs yet those numbers result in tens of thousands of overdose deaths per year. Crime wouldn't even go down. As I pointed out, 19% of crimes involve suspects using hard drugs despite only 1.5% of Americans regularly using them. What happens when 10% of the population is hooked? A wave of new addicts would also completely drain the public coffers even with a tax. As I've said repeatedly, illegal drugs cost American society $193 billion annually--and this is with a minuscule proportion of the population using hard drugs. Every single historical example of drug legalization that has we've looked at has ended in failure. Danielle failed to present a single example to bolster her case. Legalizing drugs simply is not worth the risk, especially when we have a competing policy that has been proven to be wildly successful. The government should use legal force to make drug addicts get the help they need before they destroy their lives and bodies on societies dime.=On Regulation=Danielle claims that none of the above impacts will happen because the government will regulate drugs in a way that conveniently skirts all of my arguments. She gets here because she has shifted the goal posts massively. She pivoted from rhetoric like "Everybody has the right to live free from aggression under any circumstance." and "the State should only limit the actions of individuals to prevent harming others." in Round 2 to claiming that she actually doesn't have to support the legalization of recreational drugs. Not only is it completely unethical for her to compel me to argue against a new position every round, but she can't be allowed to contradict herself in such a way. The problem with that kind of shifting of the goal posts is that Danielle has not explained clearly what type of "regulations" she is advocating. I have to sleuth through her arguments to criticize the system she wants to set up. The closest thing to regulating drugs that I can think of is how tobacco and alcohol are regulated-- which she makes reference to when she says that alcohol is "legal with safeguards." However those safeguards, regulations and taxes obviously don't do much to deter use. Over half the population regularly uses alcohol, a legal and regulated drug which she claims is as dangerous as the hardest of hard drugs, so this is hardly a ringing endorsement of regulation. Usage would go up if illegal drugs were as easy to get as alcohol. Moreover, she never gave any numbers on how much "safer" drugs would be if they were regulated. How many overdoses would "safe" Heroin and Meth actually prevent? Compare this to my arguments, where I emphasize over and over the staggering number of people who have ended up using drugs once they become legal.If the USE of ALL drugs were legalized (what the resolution says) it is clear that people would use medical drugs in needless and detrimental ways such as self medicating. To avoid facing this obvious conclusion, Danielle then claims that the resolution doesn't refer to recreational or over the counter drug use. Her arguments imply that drugs should be legal only for medicinal use, not for recreation--despite drugs like Heroin being listed as Schedule I drugs specifically because they have no valid medicinal use[1]. If that's the standard we are judging the debate from she never articulated a legitimate medical reason to use elephant tranquilizers on humans, so I win. I should not have to be scratching my head wondering what is legal in Danielle's world and what isn't. You cannot vote Pro when my opponent doesn't make it clear what she is actually advocating. The resolution says that we are legalizing the sale, manufacture, and consumption of all drugs. Danielle claiming that: "people who buy, sell or use drugs outside of government regulated parameters would be saddled with criminal penalties" is an extremely liberal interpretation of resolution that clearly specifies USE. But here's the catch--even if you accept that the resolution means Danielle can go from lofty proclamations about bodily autonomy and freedom from aggression to supporting the heavily regulated use of drugs for purely medicinal purposes, her new plan doesn't solve the problems of the black market and drug violence. If drugs are highly regulated for strictly medical use, addicts still won't be able to get the drugs they want and will continue to turn to the black market. Nothing would fundamentally change from the status quo. Contrast this with decriminalization which has been proven to take care of these problems by destroying the demand for drugs.Does Danielle want a world where we can buy recreational drugs as easily as alcohol or does she want a world where heroin, meth, and elephant tranquilizers are strictly regulated and used only for their (non-existent) medicinal purposes? She cannot have her cake and eat it too.=Wrap up=Danielle spends the majority of her fourth round going over minor subpoints that I "dropped" and supporting contradictory regulatory regimes. Compare this with my final round, where I lay out exactly what I am supporting and detail how it is superior to full scale legalization. The government should continue to criminalize the making and selling of drugs but should pivot towards a more humane approach to the use of drugs and use the force of the law to make addicts go to rehabilitation. Many points on both sides went largely ignored because the issue of decriminalization vs. legalization is ultimately all that matters. Not only has Danielle failed to present a compelling critique of policies similar to Portugal, she praised them. She has no convincing response to the disastrous results of drug legalization in the past. In the end her case is hinging on conflicting regulations acting as a catch-all solution to avoid what history tells us happens every time drug legalization occurs: drug abuse increases. This abuse has real world consequences. Drug use by less than two percent of the population kills tens of thousands of people annually, costs society hundreds of billions of dollars, unleashes waves of crime, and ruins communities. The history clearly shows us that legalization can increase this abuse tenfold whereas forcing addicts to get the help they need drives abuse down to the bare minimum. It's clear which of these is a more workable policy goal. Vote Con and thanks again to Danielle for a fun debate.Source: http://tinyurl.com...