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You expect drug use to explode if they're legalized? Why - do YOU plan to use drugs if they're legalized?

Yes. And no. Remove the prohibitions and its partaaaay time! Yes, people will go nuts -- and if they screw with crank or crack or horse, they're very possibly going to get hooked very quickly.

You expect drug use to explode if they're legalized? Why - do YOU plan to use drugs if they're legalized?

Yes. And no.

So you're part of an enlightened elite that's above such things, but the unwashed masses won't live up to your high standards. Gee, where <cough>liberals!</cough> have I heard that sort of thinking before?

It's likelier that those who are undeterred by the inherent negative consequences of drug use are also undeterred by their illegality - so legalization won't make a lot of difference.

Yes. And no. Remove the prohibitions and its partaaaay time! Yes, people will go nuts -- and if they screw with crank or crack or horse, they're very possibly going to get hooked very quickly.

One of the fundamental problems with drug-laws is that they are attractive to the sort of tyrant that CS Lewis talks about when he said this:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

This is completely ignoring the fact that we do have forfeiture-laws which make it profitable for the enforcement agencies to aggressively [and unaccountably] enforce these laws, or the fact that they are incompatible with the Constitution itself.

The interstate regulation that the judiciary uses to justify the War on Drugs [AKA the commerce clause], is inapplicable: for the 'States' is in the midst of 'foreign nations' and 'Indian tribes', and to assert the [right to the] sort of control that the federal-government does upon a foreign nation is to declare war upon them, and to exercise that control is to wage war upon them... it is thus that the War on Drugs is noting less than treason as defined by the Constitution, the waging of war upon the several States.

“Yes. And no. Remove the prohibitions and its partaaaay time! Yes, people will go nuts — and if they screw with crank or crack or horse, they’re very possibly going to get hooked very quickly.”

Actual facts dispute this notion. Consider the Portugese and Dutch experiences with quasi-legalization. In both cases, marajuana use pretty much stayed the same while hard drug use actually decreased.