let it be resolved that all drugs should be legal

Pro rejects that he has the BOP, yet he is the one that wants the current laws changed. Why should Con have BOP to keep the current laws? I will let the voters decide who has the BOP. Pro is stating his opinion with no data to support his claim in the second paragraph. He states "Every day the police spy on us, tap our phones and violate due process with warantless searches." My question would be what exactly does this have to do with legalizing drug use/sales? If true, which he shows no supported data, this is just another crime. We do have laws for due process and search and seizure, which can be found in the United States Constitution, Amendments IV and V. In his third paragraph, Pro makes more claims of his opinion with no supported data. He states "If we legalized drugs they would cost pennies on the dollar and be widely available." Where is the supported data that proves this? Pro also doesn"t seem to understand the difference between legal and illegal drugs. He says "Amphetamines are illegal and yet doctors prescribe them to children in the form of Adderal. " Amphetamines are controlled substances, which are only illegal in the wrong hands or for the wrong purposes. This is only one example of a controlled substance. In his last paragraph Pro finally get to his argument that people should be able to do whatever they want to their own bodies, without State interference. I would agree with his point if the impact didn"t affect others and society. Since the BOP could be on me, I will prove my points with facts and data. In 2002 a publication was released that showed the economic costs of drug abuse in the United States. At the end of the study it showed that the cost of drug abuse was $180.9 billion/year, and increasing 5.34% annually. The three categories that these costs were broken into were productivity, health, and others. Productivity Losses By far the largest component of cost is from loss of productivity, at $128.6 billion. In contrast to the other costs of drug abuse (which involve direct expenditures for goods and services), this value reflects a loss of potential resources. Productivity losses represent work in the labor market and in household production that was never performed, but could reasonably be expected to have been performed absent the impact of drug abuse. The estimated productivity loss in 1992 was $69.4 billion. By 2002, we estimate that this cost had risen to $128.6 billion, a 5.2 percent annual increase. This rate of increase is somewhat higher than the combined increase in the population (about one percent annually) and in wage rates (about 3.1 percent annually) of 4.1 percent during this period, although it is virtually identical to the 5.1 percent annual increase of total economic activity (termed gross domestic product) in the United States. The greatest share of productivity loss is from criminal activities, including losses because 660,000 offenders were incarcerated and others pursued crime careers to pay for their drug use. Together, there was a loss of about 1 million person years of effort that could have and arguably would have been available to the legitimate economy if these individuals had not been involved with drug-related crime. There were an estimate 23,500 drug-related3 deaths from all causes (e.g., overdose, poisoning, homicide, HIV and hepatitis B/C) in 2000, the most recent year with available data. Trend comparisons with earlier years are problematic because the US (and world) mortality diagnostic system changed in 1998. Health Care Costs Health-related costs are projected to total $16 billion in 2002. Substance abuse-related health care costs are projected to have risen 4.1 percent annually between 1992 and 2002. This rate of increase is less than the combined rate of increase of population growth and medical inflation as measured by the consumer price index for medical services (CPI-M). During this period the population grew at one percent annually and the CPI-M grew at 4.1 percent annually for a combined annual increase of 5.1 percent. Furthermore, data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services show that total health care spending grew by 6.5 percent per year between 1992 and 2002. Thus, substance abuse-related health care spending lagged somewhat behind what might have been expected. Cost of Other Effects The final major component of costs came to $36.4 billion in 2002. These primarily concern costs associated with the criminal justice system and crime victim costs, but also include a modest level of expenses for administration of the social welfare system. Between 1992 and 2002, the costs for the other effects of drug abuse rose at a 6.5 percent annual rate. This rate is clearly higher than the combined 3.5 percent annual increase which is the sum of the growth in population (one percent annually) and general inflation (2.5 percent annually) and even exceeds the 5.1 percent annual growth in the total economy over this period. https://www.ncjrs.gov... Now, I suspect that one could argue that the cost of productivity loss could decrease if drugs were legalized. But, it would be na"ve to think that it would be eliminated due to the fact that it is already proven that addicts commit other crimes to support their habit. So, it could actually increase as well. Also, it is reasonable to say that the impact of legalizing drugs use/sales would increase the health care and other costs. I look forward to Pro"s response.