Drug Legalization

Thanks to pro for continuing. P1: He cites Portugal to explain how drug use wont spike without the threat of jail. So basically, because one country had success with decriminalization, that means all 195 will. We can't extrapolate like this. One country alone, that has also only partly legalized, is not enough to prove a point that everyone should do the same. Otherwise I could say that, since Saudi Arabia enforces the death penalty for drug trafficking and has one of the lowest drug use rates in the world, everyone should adopt the death penalty for it. Furthermore, Portugal is geographically and culturally different from other nations, indicating that different nations may react to changes in different ways. So we recognize that drug use still likely spikes drastically in, at the very least, a majority of nations. P2: There are better ways to solve OD and HIV than legalizing. We can open needle exchange centers and publicize proper dosage amounts. Neither of these requires legalizing, so we can gain the benefits of these without the disadvantages of flooding hospitals with new patients. He also never says how legalizing specifically solves for OD/HIV, as in, he never gave a reason why decrim lead to a decrease of HIV in Portugal. Then he talks about impurities, but never impacts this. If he can explain why impurity causes health concerns we can have a discussion about it. P3: He states there are other variables to decreased work productivity caused by drugs, but never tells us what those variables are. Unfortunately because of their format I cannot check pro's sources to see their warrants, and all we have clashing here is evidence stating the opposite things. So lets boil this down to common sense. Who would you rather have working for you, someone who is on meth, or someone who is clean? Obviously, people on drugs would be less desirable for employers. Onto his rebuilds. Gangs: The only argument he has here is that the harms of the black market outweigh the harms of a legalized drug system. However, from debate we see that legalizing creates more drug users, abusers, and illnesses because of them. Thus, my impacts of hospital overcrowding outweigh gang violence. This means that, just as we keep rape illegal even though the opposite would solve human trafficking, we keep drugs illegal because we acknowledge worse things would happen if they were not. Gangs are an unfortunate side effect of criminalizing. But just as the drowsiness caused by cold-medications is an acceptable side effect of the pill, the gangs are an acceptable side effect of criminalizing drugs, because they solve a greater harm. Police: If I'm understanding this correctly, he's basically saying that we can find evidence for crimes like murder/rape without violating rights, but with drugs we can't. Thats not necessarily true. If police suspect someone for murder they can break into their house and take anything the believe is evidence. If a person accuses someone of rape, they can be taken from their job and forced into a police station for questioning. And with drugs, police have the right to take meth-filled cars and the like for investigation. So the point is, rights to privacy and property are constantly violated in *every* crime investigation, not just drugs, contrary to what my opponent seems to believe. Yet we all know that despite this supposed violation of rights, we must keep these crimes illegal, but his logic indicates we must not. Also on the asset forfeiture laws. I really dont think it matters if its taking property from someone. If the police find somebody's car to be a meth factory on wheels, they have every right to take it. I await my opponents response.