Full Drug Legalization

I dont find it necessary to prove the safety of cocaine any more then i find it necessary to prove the safety of alcohol. They are both dangerous. I would advise against taking both, but were do you or anyone get the authority to say that a person cannot make that decision on their own? No my argument about illegal and legal drugs was in reference to your statement "Illegal drugs are illegal because they are harmful. Illegal drugs are not illegal just because." I was simply pointing out the inconsistency of our laws in allowing for some very harmful drugs to be legal yet make others illegal. Then make less harmful drugs (marijuana) illegal. Our drug policy has no consistency, because there is no real underlying principle behind it. Our drug policy was merely created to please a growing evangelical political movement in America. It is impossible to disprove or prove anything about the effects of full drug legalization because there is no example in the world. You are correct to point that out and i never disputed it. Yet whenever a country has made moves towards legalization positive things have come out of it. The example you gave in Alaska is hardly fool proof for either side. The courts have effectively legalized small possession amounts by citing a case in the 1970's. And five seperate studies (two of them from the government itself) negate the DEA pamphlet that you c/p from that stated: "Alaska's experiment with Legalization in the 1970s led to the state's teens using marijuana at more than twice the rate of other youths nationally." And if one harm alone is sufficient to reject legalization then the same should be true for the war on drugs, but its not, because people supporting drug criminalization start out with a personal disapproval of drugs then go about building a case to make them illegal. The DEA is merely trying to hold onto its job...of course they are against legalization it literally puts them out of work. My whole argument isn't negated by one flaw...even if the one you had pointed out was flawed. I should have explained the context of that blog better. It was made after the drug czar claimed that there was absolutely no medical uses for marijuana. The government didnt bother going into an investigation about whether or not he had lied because he was just following his job description. The job description tells him that he me use any means necessary to oppose drug legalization (which does not exclude lying). I am standing on quite a solid foundation for my argument. One that i presented at the beginning and you have not addressed a single time. That is the former drug prohibition that this country went through during the 1930's. The former alcohol prohibition and current drug prohibition share many frightening correlations. Homicide rates increased during both periods (offsetting general decreases during other time periods). Deaths from substance overdose increased (both the result of no required labeling of the dosage for both substances). Deaths from contaminated illegal substance increased (the result of no industry oversight). Organized crime skyrocketed and benefited greatly from the constant high revenue source of substance trafficking. All of those problems were largely eliminated or at the least greatly reduced by the simple act of legalizing alcohol. It seems only logical that if drug prohibition has followed the same trends of alcohol prohibition that ending drug prohibition would also solve the same problems that ending alcohol prohibition solved. Then there is a constitutional argument that we never addressed...you'll notice that an amendment was passed when they made alcohol illegal...no such amendment was ever passed for drugs. Putting drug criminalization on very shaky constitutional grounds here in the US. Last of all there is the moral argument. I still dont know where you or anyone else gets the authority to criminalize something just because they dont like it. If people think drugs are wrong and should not be consumed then they have a very simple course of action: do not take drugs and offer knowledge to others of the dangers of drugs. I find it very hypocritical that you think any amount of money is worth "saving the children", but yet thousands of these children and other people have ruined lives because of the tough enforcement of the drug war. At the very least politicians should be debating the merits of this issue, and not throwing more cash at it and pushing it under the rug.