I dissagree.
Private drug use has a way of spilling over into the public. Like when that guy last week used drugs in private, then killed his roommate, ate part of her lung and then walked down the street with blood dripping from his mouth and shirt.
According to SCROTUM (Supreme Court, Rulers of the United Mandates) The killing and the eating since it was in private is ok, walking down the street bloody well that's reprehensible.
Prostitution on the other hand. The state needs a "compelling interest" to regulate it. If the spread of disease which is clearly more prominent in homosexual circles than in prostitution isn't a compelling state interest. If morality isn't a compelling state interest. Then what the heck kind of interest could the state possibly have in regulating it.
The only thing the state can do now is license it, tax the heck out of it and burden it with rediculous amounts of paperwork. That's the way the kill anything good in society.
Oh, come on. People who drink alcohol privately never venture out doors? We are punished by acts of harm towards others while drinking, not by drinking itself.
I am going to spend another week-end refraining from drinking, smoking, or taking drugs. It is my choice. If I chose otherwise, I would like for the government to leave me alone until the point I impacted another.
There is an argument to make that when one drinks or does drugs at home, one can be a jerk to one's minor kids. If that is the argument one wants to make to ban drugs I say fine, if it includes alcohol. That is the big rub for me. If people do the craziest things imaginable on alcohol, just being unhypocritical requires that either it be banned or pot be legalized. I prefer that pot be legalized, but the state of hypocrisy we live in is the third best option.
You can name anything that somebody on illegal drugs does, the damage it does, and you know already Danny that I can show you statistics that alcohol abusers are doing far worse.
For me, the pot and alcohol thing would be like banning ford escorts for causing greenhouse gas emisions, but allowing SUV's to remain legal. It's absurd to ban either for adults, but you don't ban the escort and let people drive around in the Explorer.
Or make it too expensive for anyone but the elite to engage in.
One of the main reasons Prohibition ended in 1933 was that there was a serious decline in federal tax revenues in the Great Depression. Once alcohol was available, it was taxed heavily. (In fact, soft liquor was already made available in FDR's Hundred Days in early '33 before the 21st Amendment repealing the 18th was ratified, by a change in the statute -- things like beer became available, and were taxed.)
Also, if prostitution is legal, it can -- and should -- be regulated. I understand there is very little venereal disease among prostitutes in Nevada, where prostitution is legal and regulated.