“In other words, let us become like the drug dealers in aiding a abetting the death of our youth.”
Actually, the drug use in the countries that have decriminalized drugs drops.
http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/67
For example, the Netherlands, has HALF the rate of drug use that the USA.
As much as I agree that the drug war causes us problems and we should legalize marijuana, I can't keep watching you post this and not say anything. You've said that drugs are basically legal in the Netherlands, they are not. Aside from alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, the only non-medicinal drug they allow is marijuana. They aren't nearly as punitive as we are on other drugs, but they don't allow retail sales and they don't allow possession of drugs that are illegal here except in the case of marijuana. And drug use didn't drop in the Netherlands when they started allowing marijuana. It actually went up, considerably. Now, marijuana use was low there and throughout Europe at the time. It hadn't taken off like it did here yet. In the seventies and eighties it went up in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe. The increase in use was no more pronounced in the Netherlands than it was in other European countries where it was still criminalized. So, allowing possession and sales probably had little or nothing to do with the rise in use. And even though they allow retail sale of marijuana and allow people to grow a few plants, per capita use is still much lower there than here, no matter which study you look at. Only about half as many of the Dutch have even tried marijuana compared to Americans. You are absolutely right about that, but the Dutch policy of allowing sales and possession of marijuana did not make use go down.