I stopped at this horse crap. Make drugs legal and then the criminals would be law abiding citizens? IS that the premise?
I weep for what public education has done to this nation.
Several problems with your commentary.
Of the over 850,000 incarcerations for pot in this country, approximately 740,000 of those are for personal possession.
With the average cost of a trial, the average cost of incarceration and enforcement, the cost of personal possession of marajuana is somewhere around 50,000 per person who is busted.
That comes out to 30,000,000,000 that would be saved in drug costs and jail costs.
So, let’s see now. Is it worth it?
Also, aside from $30 billion in savings, we’re talking about probably close to that much in taxes, and nearly that much reducing enforcement costs because many illegal drugs would no longer be transported. Pot seems to be the gateway.
You probably should have stopped reading at the sentence before that, reading:
For one thing, this would provide a great source of new tax revenue
This is where I have the problem with any drug legalization argument. Anything that wouldn't grow the size of government--and basically, that's what I think this would do--would be perfectly okay. But this does the exact opposite of what it's intended to do.