Debate: ARE YOU AGAINST SMOKING?
Side: NO

Not many drugs are more potent than alcohol, or more dangerous than cigarettes. It's hard to prove one way or another, but there's substantial evidence to support the claim that people actually drank more during the Prohibition, not less. And it is known that Prohibition contrubuted to an increase in drinking among women and children, and that there were more arrests for public drunkenness during Prohibition than either before or after. Making something illegal doesn't necessicarily make it happen less (sometimes quite the opposite) and it eliminates all possibility of a safe substance and a safe environment to take it in, and a safe, helpful system to fall back on should things go south. During the Prohibition, for example, people were making bootleg alcohol which sometimes caused blindness and death; at very least it had an unclear percentage of alcohol, so people didn't know what they were getting into. Nowadays, because alcohol is legal, it's production, sale, and consumption is regulated to try to insure safe intake of a safe product. It is by no means a failsafe system, but it's much, much better than no system at all. Similarly, nowadays if you want to buy coke or MDMA or marijuana, you actually have no idea where your drugs came from, who made them, or what's in them; you are forced to buy and take them in shady, unsafe situations; kids are not properly informed about the drugs that they will inevatably do because the state is forced to teach abstinence only; getting caught with these substances is less likely to result in rehabilitation, counseling, and therapy than a jail sentence - all of this because these drugs are illegal. If they were legal the government could regulate the industry (single handedly eliminating the black market for these items at the same time, just as ending Prohibition put an end to black market alcohol), insuring a clean, pure, and safe product; the sale and consumption of these drugs could be monitored in safe settings (and taxed!); children could be informed of the reality of the drugs they will undoubtedly consume and be taught what constitutes safe use, instead of being taught that drugs are evil and you must never do them ever (or your brain will rot, or some equal bullshit); and our government could be less focused on throwing people with a drug problem in jail and more concerned with treating them properly. That is why the state should condone this "destructive" behavior. Well, that and they're a bunch of fat hypocrites for getting around and indulging in "destructive" drugs every time they want to talk about their ongoing (and failing) War on Drugs. You just know every petty and oppressive piece of legislation against drugs they conspire to force through is discussed over Cuban cigars and glasses of bourbon. That's why I mention the alcohol and smokes; our government has already had ample experience in discovering that prohibition doesn't work. And the government has sustained itself throughout the years on drug money via the tobacco industry. So alcohol and tobacco remain legal. I don't understand why they cant apply the lessons they've learned to this issue, too.