none that we are aware of. Besides, our society is so much different; having once been dominated by strong respect for individual rights and the "live free or die motto." You would have to lock up 1/4 the country to make any difference. If the drug war ended tomorrow, I doubt seriously the drug problem would be much worse. I have never done any drugs and if the all drugs were legalized, I would have zero interest in any of it. The plain reality is those who want to do drugs, will find them; those who don't, will not. I have a strong faith in most people to do the right thing. To think they drug use would skyrocket because they are legal is false. Please go back and read some of Friedman's and other great thinkers. Some day the War on Drugs will be ended and years after, people will wonder why we wasted our time.
This holds about as much water as the, "you can't deport 15 million illegals" gambit.
You don't have to. You start prosecuting and people will quit.
Bull pucky. Go look at Amsterdam.
Please go back and read some of Friedman's and other great thinkers. Some day the War on Drugs will be ended and years after, people will wonder why we wasted our time.
Yawn. I've read plenty of Friedman, and sent his kid into loops to boot (in a debate over competing private currencies).
I'm sick and tired of shallow "libertarian" arguments in favor of legalization, simply because there is no personal accountability in their proposals. So chew on this for a bit, and you'd best understand it and take it in context, else I won't bother to respond:
The libertarian claim is that drug use is a victimless crime, no worse than the legal consumption of alcohol. That both are important factors in birth defects, transmission of infectious diseases, broken families, accidental pregnancies, children without support, traffic accidents, and violent crime renders the claim that either drug or alcohol abuse is "victimless" totally bogus.
It is unreasonable to expect people under the influence of increasingly powerful drugs to be capable of containing the damage they might do. So, without supplying users a motive to make absolutely certain that they cannot harm others while using a mind-altering chemical substance, there will never be a successful means of managing the consequences. Absent sufficient penalty for failure to contain destructive behavior, no legal motive can compel responsible behavior.
What's it going to take? Some people are willing to risk death for a good rush.
There's one place in the industrialized world that has contained their drug problem: Singapore, which visits extreme penalties for all recreational drug use that are enforced swiftly and uniformly. So, as a thought experiment, let's say that drugs were totally legalized in America with the following provision: Users would be subject to a similarly stiff penalty if their actions inflicted harm on other people while they were intoxicated; such as causing a traffic accident, domestic violence, transmission of a communicable disease, etc. Let's say it's death with no appeals.
So, if the advocates of drug legalization are not willing to sign onto heavy penalties for the consequences of irresponsible drug use, isn't the argument, that decriminalizing the substance will not cause serious public health and safety problems, at least suspect? Similarly, if alcohol users are not similarly willing to accept the same penalties as with drugs for the consequences of alcohol intoxication aren't they being hypocritical for advocating keeping drugs illegal?
Both arguments are made by people who want access to the substance of their choice and to avoid accountability for the consequences to other people. So are we stuck with what we are doing now?
The simple fact is that even if it was within the physical power of the United States to stop the importation of illegal drugs, it won't stop domestic illegal drug production any more than it stopped moonshiners and speakeasies during prohibition. Meanwhile, there are solid reasons for concern that effective domestic drug enforcement would do serious damage to civil liberties.
The point of this discussion is not to decide what should be legal or not. It is to show that the choice to enforce the law is not optional. The selective or non-enforcement (what we have now), perpetuates the problems that create the call for solutions that threaten those liberties. So with respect to illegal drugs we have only this hard choice: enforce extremely harsh penalties for all illegal drug use, or decriminalize drug use with extreme penalties for crimes committed under the influence of any substance, with one additional key provision.
Even if we did decriminalize all use of mind altering substances, once users have become intoxicated they can no longer be relied upon to prevent the damage they might do to others while under the influence. Here is where the peculiar transaction for a mind-altering substance bears unique distinctions that provide us the opportunity to address this issue creatively.
Consumption of a mind-altering substance only serves as a vehicle for an experience. The drug functions as a vehicle for entertainment. If a drug producer could sell a means to induce a high without manufacturing or selling a substance, would users purchase the product? Sure, because the product is the high, an experience that often includes the loss of judgment. The producer of that product has thus become a party to the change in the decision-making faculties of the customer and a potential accessory to any crimes committed while intoxicated.
An obvious consequence of that idea is the significant liability inherited by the drug producer or seller that varies greatly with the manner in which judgment is altered or impaired. Makers of stimulants might not be as affected as if they made hallucinogens. The scope and extent of the risk depends upon the product, dosage, and user response. The risk associated with impairment also varies by the circumstances the user encounters. It's complex, too complex for a bureaucracy to manage, almost too complex for a market to operate unless there is a way to keep a cheaters from undercutting their responsible competition.
One problem with incorporating risk into the product under legalization is that the cost of risk in an open sale vastly outweighs the production cost of the drug. For example, a dose of LSD can cost but a $1 to produce and can be made in a good high-school chemistry lab, but the risk of harm in a single dose to or by the user via an auto accident or other crime is substantially more.
All of these factors point to the same conclusion: without rigorously enforced and extreme penalties for crimes committed under the influence with at least civil liability on the part of the seller, there is no hope that sellers and users won't produce and distribute drugs on a black market. If however, the user buys the drug from a vendor with sufficient insurance and perhaps facilities that keep the user from doing too much damage, the possibility of the consequent crimes has been greatly reduced. So, if drugs were to be legalized under this scenario, the only way someone would sell them without risking life in prison or worse, is if they took responsibility for the actions of an intoxicated user by whatever means.
That in itself is a hard political sell even if the billions we are spending now on drug enforcement and the profits now financing organized crime are sufficient to cover the cost of risk. Legalized in such a manner, the price of some drugs might be cheaper than they are on the black market now and people with drug problems could be identified and helped.
If the public is unwilling to inflict such punishments, then there is no way to legalize recreational drugs and the only way to control a drug problem is to do what Singapore has done, similar to what the United States used to do before we had a major drug problem. Either way, we cannot solve this problem by failing to enforce bad law.
It's either re-institute draconian punishments, or tolerate what we have now, or worse.