Of those who have used heroin, 23% have at some time been addicted - for alcohol, the figure is 15%. Addictive drugs, both.
and today’s highly potent marijuana is not only harmful to the body
As are alcohol, tobacco, and bacon double cheeseburgers.
but a gateway drug to cocaine and heroin.
Not significantly more so than alcohol or tobacco.
No matter how many low-level drugs you throw at people, they will push against the boundaries and seek ever harder stuff. You need simple bright lines against dangerous drugs. No marijuana allowed!
Where's the bright line against the deadly addictive mind-altering drug alcohol? Do its users push against the boundaries and seek ever harder stuff?
Your compromise solution – the heroin-and-Jack Daniels utopia —
What's your ideal policy on Jack Daniels?
will still have burdensome rules and be a big, malignant mess.
Legalized alcohol is working much better than the alternative did.
Even if drugs are cheap, addicts will still need living expenses. They will mug people and break into houses to support themselves. Or go onto welfare and get free drugs forever.
But less so than when drugs are expensive. As a conservative, I favor reducing government expenditure and other theft.
Most (juvenile-minded) libertarians care little about “good libertarianism” — rolling back harmful economic laws involving minimum wage, runaway entitlements, insider trading and antitrust etc. What they love most is drugs, sex and rolling back the laws of God.
Then go argue with them.
Who among us is asking for prohibition on alcohol and cheeseburgers? That is politically impossible, even if we wanted to do it. But we should keep in place a bright line around marijuana and harder drugs. Alcohol already causes huge problems. So why legalize drugs that are even more addictive?
You favor regulating heroin and crack cocaine like hard liquor — even though that would involve the exact sort of bureaucratic rules and police that libertarians abhor. The stuff would inevitably spread into schools and neighborhoods everywhere, not just the inner city. It would be far cheaper and more abundant than today. Sixteen-year old kids will become hooked for life.