(1) How will previously illegal drugs be made available? Certainly not over the counter - you will not be able to just walk in and buy powerful street drugs legally at your local pharmacy or supermarket.
They will be available only by prescription.
(2) In order to get the prescription, a cottage industry of disreputable medical professionals and social workers will fill the gap. And they will not remain nonviolent
(3) Whether he gets his fix from a shady prescription mill and its enforcers rather than from a shady street dealer and his enforcers is immaterial to the employability of junkies.
They are unemployable and they will either be subsidized by taxpayers directly, or they will subsidize themselves through violent crime or, more likely, through both.
(4) Junkies by their nature, need to take doses that are lethal for nonusers and near-lethal for users. The government will not allow such dangerous doses to be dispensed. Therefore, obtaining the desired dose will be illegal in all conceivable circumstances anyway.
(5) Legalization will certainly encourage people who would not otherwise experiment to experiment.
Decriminalization will alleviate nothing and potentially create new problems.
Maybe it will, maybe it won't.
It's too bad someone hasn't come up with the idea of dividing a country into separate sub-jurisdictions so we could test different approaches to things like drug use, and the jurisdictions with the best approaches would gradually see those adopted across the board. Rather than dictating policy for the entire country without any sense of whether or not it is working.
(1) How will previously illegal drugs be made available? Certainly not over the counter - you will not be able to just walk in and buy powerful street drugs legally at your local pharmacy or supermarket.
They will be available only by prescription.
Says who? Any adult can buy the powerful drug alcohol.
(2) In order to get the prescription, a cottage industry of disreputable medical professionals and social workers will fill the gap. And they will not remain nonviolent
See above.
(3) Whether he gets his fix from a shady prescription mill and its enforcers rather than from a shady street dealer and his enforcers is immaterial to the employability of junkies.
They are unemployable and they will either be subsidized by taxpayers directly, or they will subsidize themselves through violent crime or, more likely, through both.
Or as alkies do: odd jobs, panhandling, can collecting, etc.
(4) Junkies by their nature, need to take doses that are lethal for nonusers and near-lethal for users. The government will not allow such dangerous doses to be dispensed. Therefore, obtaining the desired dose will be illegal in all conceivable circumstances anyway.
Any adult can easily buy several times the lethal dose of the drug alcohol.
(5) Legalization will certainly encourage people who would not otherwise experiment to experiment.
So let 'em - contrary to Reefer Madness mythology, a single experience with a drug is rarely if ever damaging or addicting.
Yeah, you just can't turn on a TV without hearing about the lastest shootout between shady docs having a dispute over their OxyContin turf.
Oh. Wait. Actually, I don't recall hearing any stories like that at all....
So let it be written. So let it be dumb.
How do you justify a police state?
Your argument loses a lot of force when you realize the shady world of prescription drugs you describe already exist. So does the world of junkies stealing to feed their habit. We ca shift the forces now used to crack down on drug sales and possession to fight the real crimes of robbery, burglary, etc.
I truly cannot understand the paper thinness of drug warrior arguments. You’ve had a long while and much opposition and that’s all you can come up with? Specters of things that are already happening with the unjust, deadly, costly, demoralizing drug war.
I must assume some are deterred from drug use b drug laws. But the margin has got to be so thin it’s anorexic. Come on, who doesn’t at least try something that really wants to? Maybe not crack or meth, but any number of milder alternatives.
WRT #5 - what is wrong with experimentation and learning on one’s own instead of just believing what they are told?
Your concerns all seem to be premised on the idea that the government's role is to prevent people from making wrong decisions. Forget the prescriptions.
The price of drugs will fall tremendously but will level off at the price needed for intrepreneurs to supply them. There won't be enough profit to support drug gangs.
If you look at the faces of those arrested for meth addiction, I think you will conclude that the present system is not only not working, but is eroding the rest of our rights.
When is the last time you heard of a shoot-out over alcohol? In my case, not since the Untouchables TV series depicting Prohibition and the resulting gangsterism.