Why legalize drugs?

Question

I really dont know why anyone would want to legalize hardcore drugs.... so they can become mainstream in todays youth, ruin young lives, keep certain communities of people in the dumps, raise violence caused by delusional high people, raise the amount of car crashes by delusional high people ? What is to be gained ... money perhaps? Who supports this anyway? Libs or Cons?

Yes... it wont be leaglized for youth but how Naive can you be??? POT is the hot drug in todays youth... i know i am 15. and people get cigs from their parents and other sources, heck 1/4 of my school smokes!!... so why not pot??

PFO... I cant believe what you are saying!!! It only ruins their lives if they get caught??? Oh so it wont effect their school work and health??? They wont be more concerned with getting stoned as they would about getting into college? Oh yeah i forgott.... POT is harmless!!

Answer 1

So liberals won't have to kill each other over it.

Answer 2

Alcohol consumption under 18 used to be legal almost everywhere. Now it is not. Reason? Abuse. Now we have limits on how much you can drink before driving, yet people still abuse it. Cigarette smoking is banned in the same way. Making something legal does not cure all the problems. It creates different problems. If society says it's OK to do drugs, they will.

We've got enough history behind us to show that legalizing substances that impair will cause just as much damage, if not more, because now it is in essence, endorsed. Countries that have experimented with this have seen problems move from one area to another. One thing they have not seen is less people throwing their lives away. People who desire to do drugs - do, contributing nothing to society. They are pretty much inebriated their entire life. If you legalize drugs you will increase this nonsense by more than you could imagine. Could you imagine a country the size of the U.S. doing this? What a mess we'd have. The biggest problem is not the people selling it - it's the users creating a demand for the stuff. Fix that and all the rest is easy.

Answer 3

I've moved to an area where there seems to be a meth lab behind every third tree. Legalization could hardly make the drugs more available, since they're already ubiquitous. It would provide pure drugs in known doses, thereby being safer for the user. We'd have fewer fires and explosions from the meth labs blowing up (fairly common in this area). And it would remove an area of criminal commerce. I don't see there being more car crashes; alcohol is the worst actor here, and the other drugs are already there. You might also talk to a doctor or nurse, especially one who works in an emergency room. A large number of the people in ER's are there trying to get narcotics, often successfully. I'd just as soon they get them elsewhere without having to bother with the subterfuge. I think the use of drugs would only increase slightly and temporarily, and the amount of money spent on drugs and the "war on drugs" would go down substantially, and the money could be spent on treatment of addictions more productively.
Not liberal or conservative, just libertarian and practical.

Answer 4

Because
1. you have no right to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own body
2. The illegality of drugs creates a taboo allure which ensures people will want them
3. Creates an artificial high price on the drugs which is a direct cause of violence+crime (gangs, mafia,terrorists, etc)
4. Will cause problems at first but in long run will reduce drug related problems as people choose to stay away from them on own without a govt mandate (see #2).
5. Nothing on the "blackmarket" is any worse than prescription drugs which can be just as bad if not worse.

Over the generations if we have learned one thing it is this...if you deny something to someone..they will want it and find a way to get it. So why make roadblocks which cause strife, conflict, crime and violence when if you allowed it, it might not be pretty but it would be controllable in direct opposition to today's uncontrollable failure in the realm of drugs..a failure so monumental that i think it is time we tried something vastly different.

Also I dunno about you but I don't look at that guy all cracked out as a role model or as imitatible behavior

Addition> Pot IS harmless when in moderation..JUST LIKE ANYTHING ELSE! That is where PARENTS come in..to kick the kid upside head of not doing their school work....kids will find any excuse not to do it, not just drugs but video games, sports, sex, dating, movies, tv, art, etc. So parents have to step in and...parent. It's THEIR job to raise+teach kid about this stuff

eric54_20> I regret I have only 1 thumbs up for that answer

Answer 5

If you are talking just about youths, then I don't think it would be legal for them anyway. Just like alcohol. I'm sure it would be treated the same way.
The war on drugs is not working. We have poured Billions $$$$ into it and it's worse then ever.
Decriminalizing it would keep otherwise law abiding citizens out of our prision system.
We make people crimminals for using pot, which I don't consider more harmful then drinking.
We keep batting our heads against the wall when it comes to drugs and it's not working. Time for a change. Other countries treat it as a medical problem rather then a crimminal problem and the crime rate went down.

Answer 6

I am for legalization across the board.All of it.I do not do any drugs,but in my youth I did.It is not that I condone drug use,it is that I accept the reality of it.Outlawing drugs of any type stops no one,ever.If it did,you wouldn't be speaking of Rampant drug use.If the legality of drugs made a difference in the use of drugs,that would be a different story.No one,NO ONE DOESN'T do drugs because they are illegal.The reason people do drugs is they want to,the reason they don't is because they don't want to.Whether they are legal or not never enters the equation.If it did,you wouldn't smoke pot."Pot is harmless" has ZERO to do with the fact that it is illegal and you do it anyway."Harmless"is YOUR interpretation.Some think LSD and Ecstasy may have legitimate use.Codeine really helps me deal with pain.
So what is accomplished by making drugs illegal?
1)We make criminals,who will be paid for by the state while incarcerated,families probably paid by the state,wage earner gone.
2)We make billionaires of overseas drug lords who can afford armies to rival those of their host nations
3)You put a "COOL" factor there because it is illegal,keeping it hidden.So that the "gateway" is in the eyes of the new user,a "rebel"..WAY COOL.Put it out in the open,all of it.I think use would decrease,as the use didn't have to stay hidden,and youth could get a good look at the ugly side of it.What costs 100$ now could be made for pennies,less crime.Billions of dollars spent on incarceration and welfare could go to rehabs.If you can't beat it(YOU CAN'T,NO WAY,NO HOW)At least you could regulate it.Drug laws are useless wastes of money and rescorses

Answer 7

I would never use "hardcore drugs" but I would legalize them. If history has taught us anything, it's that banning substances does not work. Just think of the prohibition experiment during the 1920s and early 30s.

Well meaning citizens wanted to lower drunkenness, improve families, and increase worker productivity. They had good intentions for banning alcohol but the ban itself created a myriad of problems. Organized crime developed, the cost to enforce the law rose, consumption did not go down, incarceration rates increased, and the alcohol itself was more dangerous. It's the same thing that's happening all over again with the war on drugs. We are paying money to make everything worse.

This is what John D. Rockefeller had to say:
"When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognised. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before."
- Sounds applicable to what we have going on today doesn't it?

Answer 8

Okay, first pot is NOT harmless. The inhalation of ANY kind of smoke is harmful, but I will concede that if smoked in the same fashion as a cigarette, it has fewer health risks. I am for the legalization, or at the least decriminalization of marijuana for a number of reasons. It's said that pot is a gateway drug. My argument is that the ONLY reason for that is it's prohibition. Most of the pot heads that I know just like to smoke pot.

Answer 9

Sorry, but they are mainstream. They are everywhere. Why? Because you can buy them on street corners and trailer parks. Prohibition does not work.

Look at things in the Netherlands. In Amsterdam you can buy canabis in coffee shops (obviously canabis is not a hardcore drug, it is safer than alcohol but bare with me). They also have a needle exchange program for junkies. In countries where drugs are illegal, they no longer cause an element of crime. Why? Because they are cheaper and people don't have to steal or kill to obtain them. The entire society is not strung out on heroin by any means! But the crime rate is very low. Not only that, if you are a heroin user in a country like that, you can work a regular job, contribute to society and such. I'm certainly not an advocate for heroin use, or crack or meth. But belive me prohibition causes more problems than the problem itself. Look how many people died as a result o alcohol prohibition in the 1920's! Organized crime stepped in and provided the stuff the government would no longer tolerate.

The government should have no control over what someone does in their own home so long as they do not hurt anyone else...(assult, rape, murder, steal, ect.) When the government starts making laws to 'protect us from ourselves' and laws that are designed to make our choices, they do not stop until they start making ALL of our choices.

The key to dealing with drugs is proper education. How can kids take drug education seriously these days? They won't belive the evils of hard drugs because at the very core of drug education are lies about marijuana. (myths like: it kills your brain cells, its worse than 5 ciggarettes ect...)

EDUCATION is the most important problem in America today. The average American has an 8th grade reading level apon graduation from highschool. Sad? Yes. But true.

Answer 10

I support it because people who want to get high are going to do it whether legal or not. We spend too much tax money on the fake "War On Drugs"! How about actually get tax revenue from the sale of these drugs.

Do you know how much money our government spends prosecuting drug offenders? Do you know how many people are in jail over using? We spend so much money on the prosecution and incarceration of drug traffickers as well. Yet more and more people continue to partake in the drug business. It doesn't look like progress to me.

Nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol are just as bad in my opinion but they are all legal. We shouldn't be policed over what we choose to put in our bodies. Just as long as it doesn't affect the lives of anyone else, such as drinking and driving and DWI. There should still be age limits of course but I think the War Against Drugs is a lost cause. It's like the War on Terror, we cannot win no matter how hard we try. Neither will ever end. Anyone who thinks these situations will get better or we will make progress are kidding themselves.

If a drug kingpin falls, there is just another waiting in line to take his place. If a drug trafficker gets busted, there is another one waiting to take his place. Making these things legal would decrease the murder rate in the inner city. What are most conflicts over? You guessed it, drugs. But this is fine to society because the inner city doesn't affect you and I. As long as it doesn't enter our domain let's just let things be. Well I am more interested in the pedophiles, rapists, murderers, and serial killers more than the drug trade.

Answer 11

The legalization of drugs will help in part to curb all the terrible things you have mentioned.
If legal they can be controlled & regulated by the government, this will eliminate the crime element in producing & distribution of drugs. Which is where a lot of the crime problems start.
I am not condoning drug use I think education is the only viable solution to the problem, but legalizing them would certianly be a good start in the right direction.