Recreational Drugs should be Legalized

1) "I agree that recreational drugs are widely traded and used on the black market, you fail to substantiate that black marketeers profit unduly from the fact of the illegality. " The logic here is very simple, and the history of alcohol prohibition has shown it to be accurate as well. If there is a demand for a product that is legal, the vast majority of people will prefer to purchase it by legitimate means. It is true that there is a black market for legal goods, but it is pale in comparison to the black market for illegal goods. When alcohol was prohibited, organized crime rapidly expanded. After prohibition was lifted, they moved on to supplying the drugs which had recently become illegal under the Federal Narcotics Act, but they shrank in size as these drugs don't have the demand that alcohol does. If those drugs were made available through legal means, their funds would dwindle even further. "This is equivalent to saying that making rape illegal causes pimps to make more money in prostitution. " That's absolutely ridiculous. The equivalent would be saying that making prostitution illegal would cause pimps to make more money, and that is true. The prostitutes of the Red Light District in Amsterdam are much cleaner and safer than their illegal counterparts in cities with less lenient laws. Cleaner because condoms are mandatory, a policy that is only enforceable if the establishment is legal and regulated. Safer because the streets are lined with police ensuring that none of the women are raped or injured. Instead of being "protected" by pimps, these women are protected by the police. 2) "In this justification you have put money ahead of the ruined lives of addicts, their families and society. " No, this point was simply to show how legalization would benefit the economy. If you look at my other points, you will see that legalization will not ruin the lives of addicts and their families. Perhaps I should have saved this point for last. 3) I would agree that more severe punishments for drug smugglers makes sense, but I will still argue that they will not go away, regardless of how harsh the penalties are against them, until the demand for illegal drugs dissipates, and that will only happen if there is a legal means of obtaining these drugs for the people who are addicted to them. 4) It's interesting that you bring up Switzerland, perhaps you should have done some more research on them. From what I've read, their policy of providing heroin to those who are addicted, by a doctors prescription, has been very successful in reducing usage rates and their model has since been adopted by cities in Germany, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, to name a few. Since the practice was adopted in 1994, heroin related deaths have decreased by more than half, the number of new heroin users decreased from 850 in 1990 to 150 in 2002, the transmission of aids and substance abuse related crimes have also decreased. Perhaps most importantly, "'In Switzerland, the medicalisation of heroin use has helped change the image of users: from rebels to losers,' Nordt said. 'In the eyes of the young, they're mostly just sick people, forced to get medical help. '" The best way to reduce the rate of future addictions is to convince kids that drugs aren't cool, and it seems that treating addicts as people in need of medical help is having precisely that effect. . http://www.swissinfo.org... For very dangerous and addictive drugs like heroin, the Swiss model of providing them through a doctors office and allowing for controlled use seems to work very well. However, drugs with no severe health risk, like marijuana, should be legalized and distributed in a manner similar to alcohol. There is absolutely no reason why marijuana should be illegal while alcohol and cigarettes remain on the open market. I don't want to get too much into marijuana, for that is a debate in itself, but I will quickly say that alcohol and tobacco both exhibit qualities that are many times worse than those of marijuana and so it is very hypocritical of our government to allow the sale of these substances while prohibiting marijuana. 5) There is one final point that I would like to make that I should have made in my first argument for why addictive, high-risk drugs need to be made available through legal means: to protect children and teens. As it stands right now, the best place to find illegal drugs in suburban towns are in high schools. When I was in high school, the most difficult drug to obtain was alcohol. The only way I could get alcohol was if someone had a parent or older sibling willing to buy it for them. On the contrary, I could get any drug that I wanted from dealers in school. By moving drugs from the illegal to the legal market, you put drug dealers out of business and out of schools.