The War on Drugs is unconstitutional, immoral, and a complete failure.

Thank you for accepting my challenge! Candice, you sound like an intelligent, moral person, and my disagreement with you is over technicalities in the way I believe our gov't should operate, not the substance of your beliefs. My thesis was that "the war on drugs is 1) unconstitutional, 2) immoral, and 3) a complete failure". You failed to address any of these points in your argument. Instead you transformed my argument into "1) highly addictive substances should be available to everyone 2) drug addicts are just as innocent as the mentally handicapped 3) general family values in contradiction with drug use are wrong. I will address each point in your argument even though you ignored mine. Please address the three points I made in my initial argument in the next round. In your opening paragraph, you say that the gov't has a responsibility to protect its citizens. I can't argue this point, because this statement is very broad. However, at what lengths should the government go to "protect" us? Can you agree with me, Candice, that the gov't SHOULD have a very limited ability to influence us in this respect? Let me reiterate in case that sounds vague: Should there be limits on what the gov't can and cannot do in the interests of keeping us safe? If our civil liberties (right to free speech, bear arms, etc.) are lost in the process, can we not say the gov't should back off and let us be? You would no doubt say (if you had addressed my thesis) that the War on Drugs does not violate our civil liberties, because you don't recognize the "right to smoke crack" and neither does the constitution. However, the constitution does not grant the gov't the power to dictate family values either. In fact, you could say that the very reason this country was formed was for us to escape policies that are made to enforce religious family values! You are happy with our policy right now, Candice, because it happens to be YOUR family values that the government is perpetuating right now. Recognize that tomorrow it may be someone elses, and you will be in my spot arguing with frustration. Your next point is that drug users will not stay safely to themselves while their "mind, mood, and motor skills" are impaired, thus threatening the rest of us. The nanny on heroine, the doctor on oxycodone, and the trucker on methamphetemine. Well I'm sorry to burst your bubble, Candice, but these people are already doing that! The examples you use seem straight out of my personal life! I had a doctor giving me stitches one time in the emergency room that was intoxicated, and I was in an AA meeting one time with a trucker that jack-knifed his semi and sent it hurling down a busy road into a building while he was high on meth. If you had addressed my third argument, where I posit that the War on Drugs is a complete failure, you would see that our very un-democratic drug policies do not do anything to quell our dilemma. In essence, the only actual results our policies achieve are keeping illegal drug lords in business, and keeping drugs in steady and easy supply to drug addicts. Next are your 3 "counterarguements". 1) "Highly addictive substances KNOWN to be abused should, and always will be controlled, and in some cases prohibited". I don't see why you wrote this, it doesn't really support any of your arguments or provide evidence against mine... 2) on my analogy to autistic individuals. This was not a major point in my discussion, but if you want to make it one then we will take it there. My argument was that the civil rights of the mentally handicapped are threatened by the gov't's ability to arrest people based on their mental competance. Like I said, the strongest argument you can make against me is the fact that people, while under the influence, can make bad decisions that affect others while their mental and physical skills are impaired. If this argument prevails, how can you protect autistic individuals? Further more, who says you can't raise the bar a little and say that anyone who doesn't take their flintstone vitamins is in danger of becoming mentally impaired and should be... rehabilitated accordingly. You see, mental competance cannot be scientifically measured and is a dangerous concept to introduce into our legal system. This is different from an officers very scientific tests that measure a persons motor skills and BAC to determine if they are fit to drive a vehicle. I am not against arresting individuals who drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but I am against the gov't preventing us from consuming drugs and alcohol in the first place. Remember prohibition in the 20's? You then talk of the difference between the innocence of autistic individuals versus the guilt of the drug addicts. Are you sure you have the capability to judge drug addicts in this way? What would Jesus have to say about your decision of guilt toward people who fail to control their drug habits? I don't mean to bring up Jesus in a disrespectful or sarcastic way, I bring him up in my arguments as a tool of empathy. 3) Your third argument, if I could pick a main thesis statement from it, seems to be "it's over the Government allowing irresponsible practices that can take over a person's life, and overide previous values". Then you go on to talk about the rights of those who are in danger from substance abusers. I have already addressed these points, and I will further establish my point that irresponsible activities should not equate to illegal activites, because "irresponsible" depends on your perspective. Consider the term "irresponsible" from a religious person's perspective. Based on their religion, the term irresponsible can mean anything from not going to church on sunday, to not being a part of a very specific religious sect, to failing to blow yourself up in the name of Allah. Our laws ought to be based on a purer form of reasoning. In order to achieve pure justice, or fairness, we need laws that are free from personal beliefs or perspectives. This includes taking into account the perspective of the poor souls who are being victimized themselves from these dangerous substances. We hunt them down, put them in prison, ruin their records, and if they are lucky enough to survive the terrible health consequences of the drugs and the justice(less) system then they are let out on the streets with no hope to ever get a good job and recover because of their prison records, so they might as well just start using again. Wouldn't you if you were them? Finally, you say that my system would help people get more drugs. I pointed out that it is very easy to get them already, so what benefits of our current system are you actually trying to hold on to? You then twist my words and say that "Giving the Government in which you say should have LESS contoll over this matter ULTIMATE control!" I said the government should have less control over ARRESTING DRUG ADDICTS not the drugs themselves! It would be great to have the gov't take control of the drug industry. Then the illegal drug cartels will vanish and we can have real regulation, that JUST MIGHT end up being able to control how much drugs enter our streets. We could even hypothetically lure the drug addicts in off the streets, away from you and I, and into a place where they can get high under professional supervision and help and can be detained until they sober up to be released. Think about it! I will conclude this with a quote from a great man, who understood this issue far better than most people: "Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded"-Abraham Lincoln, 1840