The abuse of illegal drugs ought to be treated as a matter of public health, not of criminal justice

First, I would like to point out that I am not arguing that drugs should be a matter of criminal justice. In the comments section, my opponent agreed to debate me about whether or not drugs should be legalized. My position is that the production, sale, possession, and use of illegal recreational drugs should be legal for adults. I will not be responding to the points my opponent made in the first round because they could be used to support both of our positions. If drugs were legal, gangs in US inner cities would lose their main source of revenue. Latin American drug cartels currently killing tens of thousands and destabilizing governments would lose their source of income and dissolve. The Taliban and other terrorist groups would lose their main source of income. But what about increased drug use? Wouldn't an increase in drug users cause an increase in crime? No. In fact, crime among drug users would probably decrease. There would be an increase in drug users, yes. But where would these new drug users come from? The new users would have to come from the group of people that respected the law too much to use drugs while they were illegal. Those people are unlikely to become criminals. In addition, alcohol (Not meth, not PCP, not heroin, not crack—just alcohol) is the only drug that has been shown to cause aggression. [1] Violent crime committed by drug users is generally the result of people who were violent anyway. But what about addicts stealing to support their habit? If drugs were legalized, the price would fall to a small fraction of the black market price. Marijuana, for example, is predicted to fall by as much as 80% if Proposition 19 passes in California. [2] Desperate addicts would need less money to support their habit, so they wouldn't need to steal nearly as much. [1] http://www.druglibrary.org... [2] http://www.rand.org... Not only does strong law enforcement cause crime, it also often hurts law-abiding people. Many innocent people become victims of corrupt DEA agents or police officers in the drug war. Particularly dangerous to every private citizen are asset forfeiture laws, (police can seize anything they believe is connected with any crime, without a trial or hearing. Innocence of the crime is usually irrelevant.), as the following example illustrates: "The owner of a $5 million California ranch refused to negotiate with officials who wanted to merge the property into a park system. Subsequently a search warrant was obtained for a drug squad raid on the rancher's home. When applying for the warrant, police said an informant had reported thousands of marijuana plants on the property. Police did not tell the judge they were skeptical of the informant's credibility. In the application, one officer swore to what he was told by another officer, but the other officer's statement was false (by using this technique neither officer could be accused of perjury). Nor was the judge told that more than one secret warrantless search had recently been made of the ranch land without finding a single marijuana plant. Maps handed to all members of the strike team included handwritten notations saying '200 acres' and '80 acres sold for $800,000 in 1991 in same area.'" When the drug squad burst into the ranch couple's home, the wife started screaming, 'Don't shoot me! Don't kill me!' as team members manhandled her. The commotion apparently roused her sleeping husband who ran downstairs with a pistol. Squad members told him to lower the firearm, and as he obeyed they shot him to death. They ejected the woman from the house while she ran to her stricken husband. No marijuana was found in the house or anywhere on the 250 acres. The county prosecutor admitted the raid 'was motivated, at least in part, by a desire to seize and forfeit the ranch for the government.' Governmental desire to merge the ranch into parkland may explain the otherwise curious presence of U.S. Park Service agents in the drug raid team." [3] [3] Miller, Richard Lawrence. Drug Warriors and Their Prey: from Police Power to Police State. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996. Print. 105-106. But what about the public health dangers of the drugs themselves? Well, as my opponent's post shows, they are often caused not by the drugs, but by our treatment of drugs as a criminal offense (The spread of HIV through used needles, for example). But, yes, many drugs are dangerous. However, they are not nearly as life-destroying as most people assume. As an example, I will discuss heroin specifically below, and will also discuss any other drugs my opponent wishes to mention. Heroin- This drug is said to be immensely pleasurable, supposedly many times more so than an orgasm, so good that users get addicted for life after one hit. Then, once addicted, get higher and higher doses to attempt to get back to the original high, ruining their life in the process. These claims are largely false. First, a heroin high is nowhere near as good as most believe. Researchers injecting heroin into test subjects found that the vast majority were indifferent to the feeling or disliked it. [4] The actual high is basically several hours of blocking out everything. Food, sex, jobs, friends, pain, frustrations, and everything else no longer matter. Generally, only a person that already had problems, someone that wanted to escape from reality, would have a compulsive craving for this feeling. But what about physical addiction, like how smokers have physical cravings for nicotine? Studies of users show that physical dependence does not develop easily. A user would have to inject pure, unadulterated heroin three times a day for two straight weeks to develop a level of dependence detectable by medical instruments. [5] With diluted street heroin, it is even harder to develop physical dependence. Another false claim is that once addicted, heroin users are addicts for life, because it is so hard to get off heroin. Most users have few problems with withdrawal; which, physically, is generally no worse than a bad cold, and over in a few days. [7] Of course, those are just the physical symptoms. Many addicts use heroin to escape their problems. Since those problems come back once the heroin wears off, often worse than they were before, addicts just use more heroin, creating a vicious cycle. These are the people that have tremendous difficulty getting off heroin; and this type of addict has more to do with the person than the drug. As for the effect of heroin use on one's life: When most people think of a heroin user, they think of a desperate addict living on the streets, stealing to pay for his habit. This image is not the typical heroin user. [8] In 1971, Washington DC police captain Gerald M. Caplan, said "more than 100 officers were taking heroin. How did we learn about them? Not because their performance was poor. . . We took urine specimens." A study of college student GPA's found no significant difference between users and non users. [9] [4] Lasagna, L., John M. von Felsinger, Henry K. Beecher. "Drug-Induced Mood Changes in Man." Journal of the American Medical Association 157 (1955): 1113-1119. [5] Kaplan, John. The Hardest Drug: Heroin and Public Policy. Studies in Crime and Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. 27. [6] Scur, Edwin M. Narcotic Addiction in Britain and America: The Impact of Public Policy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962. 27. [7] Platt, Jerome J., and Christina Labate. Heroin Addiction: Theory, Research, Treatment. Wiley Series on Personality Processes. A Wiley Interscience Publication. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976. 171. [8] Blum Richard H., et al. Students and Drugs: College and High School Observations. The Jossey-Bass Behavioral Science Series and the Jossey-Bass Series in Higher Education (published jointly). San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, 1969.