If it would balance the budget, get rid of the deficit and legally employ people, should drugs be legal???

Question

If you made drugs legal:
1)it would free up the prison system. you could release everyone there strictly on drug charges, so that we would have space for violent criminals like child molesters.
2)it is the last frontier for a tax base. think if all the drug money was taxed and put toward organizing rehab programs.
3)people selling drugs could pay into the social security system and have some form of retirement.
finally, do you think if the gov. legalized drugs that people that don't do drugs now would start???like there would be an onslaught of drug use because all of a sudden it was legal?????

Answer 1

I have always thought legalized drugs with heavy taxation would be a good thing. The wacko conservatives will never agree too it. Just like handing out condoms, they think it makes people become evil. They just don't get the point. Also, the drug cartels would fight it too.

Answer 2

While there are some drugs that are illegal and should remain so, like PCP, most drugs are about as harmful, provided they aren't cut, as a prescribed drug. Up until 1935 or so, by the way, drugs WERE legal here. Heroin, Morphine and Cocaine were all once trademarks and available at any pharmacy. Once the government realized how much money it could make by outlawing the stuff....well, have you seen the DEA budget lately??

And no, more people would not do drugs now. Think about it. Cigarettes are legal, but the rate of new smokers is declining now for the first time in 35 years or so.

Answer 3

No thanks. We have enough alcoholics on something already legal. Though I understand where you are coming from, government doesn't work that way.

They could make it legal, and sin tax it to death, but it would not alter the fact that some of them are terribly addicting and some makes you do dumb things, like jump out of windows, or like Len Bias, the #1 draft in the NBA by the Celtics who's heart stopped on drugs before he made his first basket in the NBA.

Then, who is going to pay for the treatment centers. Government took tabacco revenue's and court wins and put it in their bank account with little cessation work, no support and no financing of a way to get people off of one of the most addictive substances known.

Alchohol was the same, plenty of revenue, but not one dime for recovery programs. They wouldn't even help pay for the rehab center's. Quiting alcohol can be very deadly if not watched by people who are trained. Your blood pressure goes up uncontrolably sometimes!

I am sure the government would have no intention of paying anything for treatment centers for the addicted. They never have!

I have been involved with a lot of families. Alcohol and drugs are a death sentence to almost any marriage. When drugs become more important than your wife and children, you are not going to get health marriages, or chidren!

Nice thought but it would fail miserably I suspect, like many of those who get out of prison and end right back in because they killed someone when they were high! Recidivism is too high, and the substances on the market are too addicting and the consequences are often terrible!

I have seen enough ruined lives because of alcohol and drugs!

The other issue I have is there is no way to tell how it effects a person. Some become very violent, some spend all their time trying to stay high, and others have to steal to buy the drugs. It is very difficult to hold down a job when you are consistantly stoned!

Answer 4

I am against prohibition, so regardless of the benefits you are dangling before us, I'd end drug prohibition, and start promoting drug purity statutes instead.

There is no tax-incentive to legalizing marijuana, unless you prohibit cultivation without a license, and figure out how to enforce that. Anyone with a porch could grow enough for the entire neighborhood. It is not like alcohol or tobacco, where you need the equivalent of a small farm to keep an addict satisfied.

the risk of addiction is not an adequate argument against legalization, as there is ample evidence that alcohol and tobacco, are both physically addicting and detrimental to health, yet those industries reap tremendous profits through their legal status.

If you /really/ think that our government is so interested in keeping drugs from people, you'll have to come up with an explanation for the increase Afghani opium production, now that we've liberated Afghanistan and our favorite for the job was elected President, what the CIA really was smuggling in the body bags during the Vietnam war, etc., etc., etc.

Answer 5

No. Except for marijuana, the cost of enforcing the legality of drugs would be more expensive than the sales of illegal drugs would bring in.

If drugs were taxed and illegal drugs were made legal, the cost of what now are considered illegal drugs would plummet. A hundred dollar bag of heroin would end up being actually worth about $5.00. Then, the value of having drugs would be so inexpensive that everyone could afford to get it.

Then, we would all have a serious health care crisis in this country. If we don't have enough of a health care crisis now, and if we don't have a short supply of drug treatment programs now, imagine how bad it would be if heroin were legal. Add to the equation, cocaine, psylocibin, mescaline, LSD, Ecstasy and all the other drugs and Oh, HOLY GOD. Whatta mess it would be.

It would cost about 10 times more to treat and rehabilitate drug users than it would be for people to buy drugs. That would be awesome for people who only want to get stoned, but it does nothing for people who would have to pay for it somehow.

Answer 6

Drugs should be legal even if they didn't do any of those things. As prohibition of alcohol in the US, and the legalization of drugs in other countries has shown, the violence and crime associated with drugs is based on its illegality, not the drugs themselves. Drugs would be much safer to use and OD"s would be greatly reduced if they were legal, because quality and strength would be consistent and accurately labeled. People could openly seek help to shake addictions, rather than hiding them for fear of retribution. Drugs could be researched and addictive agents lessened. Plus, a lot of drug use is probably inspired by their forbidden nature- they become cool and acquire a counter-culture mystique because of their very illegality. Sell them at the corner store, let everyone see who's buying them, and more people will view them as a stupid waste of time and money they don't want to be involved with, rather than an awesome mind-enhancing experience the squares playing "Dad" in government don't want to let us have.

Even if all that and all your suggestions weren't enough, this was supposed to be a free country, and the founders would be sick to think the government regulates what substances we can buy, sell, grow and take. Doesn't it make anyone else mad that the government paternalistically decided what things we can and can't do, to ourselves in our own homes, as if they're so much wiser and so kind they must protect us from ourselves? Great job they do with it, given all the violence, theft, terrorism, and expense the drug war creates or supports, while drug use continues to go up.

The entire drug war is insane. A standard scientific measure of how dangerous a drug is is the ratio of dose to overdose. By that measure and many other objective medical measures, Marijuana is one of the safest drugs known to man. It's safer than alcohol or nicotine in every conceivable way by at least an order of magnitude. Yet it's a DEA Schedule 1 drug, listed as being more dangerous, and bringing worse legal consequences for possession, than cocaine, PCP, morphine, or methamphetamines, even though it's safer than Tylenol or Coffee.

The whole thing just makes me sick, thinking of all the people's lives the government ruins in the name of protecting us from ourselves. The drug war is a monster created and sustained solely by the government. People think that government agents are protecting them from dangerous, violent, powerful drug dealers, but it's exactly the opposite, the government creates the drug dealers and gives them their power by outlawing drugs. Legalize drugs, and all the dealers will be out of business instantly. Users will buy drugs through legal means.

And no, I'm not a drug user, and I'm against drug use. But the government only serves to exacerbate the problem in the most terrible ways. It's non drug-users who are mostly sorely needed to stand up against The War On Drugs.

Answer 7

That still wouldn't do anything. If people evade the law now, to get marijuana, do you really think that they will not evade the law to escape paying taxes.

Obviously that is very likely, because its not like we ever hear about tax evasion schemes, and its not like most people dealing in marijuana are anything other than tax paying law abiding middle class American citizens.

Legalizing it and taxing it or not taxing it, the problem is that it is too easy to grow and get ahold of without being confined to any structure kind of chain of distribution or manufacture.

There are all kinds of bureaucratic structures in place to follow something like, prescription drugs, and it is a little harder to hide that kind of thing, because of the technology and capital and laboratories etc. etc. etc. required to produce prescription drugs, but Marijuana can just be grown by some hack and then peddled on the street and nobody is going to declare taxes on that.

The problem with marijuana is that it is so easy to produce and acquire that there is no way to tax it or effectively enforce any kinds of laws against it.

Answer 8

yes to all above but heavy drugs under safe conditions like a half house with medicos or shop or sometrhing.
but wont happen too many self intrest people who have the power want it to remain as is

Answer 9

it would be debated by the senate for 1000 years on how and how much and which ones and how much tax and where the taxes where allocated.

Answer 10

i've always said they should legalize marijuana and tax the begessus out of it.