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With our nanny state mentality, those druggies would be burdens for decades.

I have seen this argument before, and I could not disagree with it more. The flaw here is that it uses one government expansion of power - the socialization of health care - to justify an even greater expansion of power. Nanny-staters passed legislation making the government a health care provider, but rather than seeing the folly in that, they use that status to say "well, since government is your health care provider, it has the right to regulate your life to make sure you don't hurt/poison yourself." People have used this logic to justify a whole myriad of nanny-state legislation, from seatbelt and helmet laws to anti-drug laws.

I say, legalize all the drugs and use the same tactics as MADD does with drinking and driving to socially stigmatize drug abuse. Then, if we do see an increase in costs to government as healthcare provider, we use that as a justification to REDUCE government's participation in healthcare, not increase it.

If we keep going down the road that you are advocating, we will be under total government control in no time, because if government is going to take care of us from cradle to grave, it is also going to demand we live by its rules and under its control.

Back home from work. I’ve heard your argument also. And you addressed a postscript to my argument, not the main argument that people take legalization to mean the same thing as morally okay. A huge number of those who abstain from using drugs do so now only because it is illegal. Drug use and abuse would expand exponentially, as abortions did. Special interest groups will demand rights and more rights and push the limits as far as possible, as abortion rights activists are doing. Drug addiction would become a “handicap” as alcoholism is now. The current illegal drug people will just increase the potency of their products to keep the market going. While I don’t advocate the nanny state and am not arguing it expand by any means, it is a fact right now that will impact how the druggies are treated and at whose expense. You can’t seriously think that our current crop of jurists and legislators will simply make druggies pay the cost of their folly where they have a long history of excusing others. It is legalizing it that will expand the nanny state, not keeping it illegal.