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"If drugs are decriminalized, leaving babies to die in trash cans will still be illegal.

If drugs are decriminalized, killing kids will still be illegal. "

Yeah yeah, but the problem is that YOUR side says laws don't stop anything. If the drug rates aren't going to change, then this shouldn't be an issue.

You can't have it both ways.. Saying how wonderful the world will be with easy to get heroin or whatever and then denying that any damage will occur because the laws will save us.

What a joke.

Monty, if your mind is truly open, consider this: Every war carries costs. The bigger the opponent, the bigger the costs. The longer the campaign, the bigger the costs.

The costs of the War on Drugs have been and still are astronomical. Not merely in countable dollars, but in lost liberties, lost privacy rights (e.g., bank secrecy laws), corruption of law enforcement, entanglement with the governments of other nations, and the use of law for pecuniary gain (i.e., asset forfeiture). Therefore, even if drug consumption rates were to remain unchanged after a repeal of the drug laws, the situation would have improved dramatically, for all those costs would come to a screeching halt.

I despise intoxicants and intoxication. I lost a brother to drugs; he was killed in a street shootout between drug gangs. But it is a lead-pipe cinch that he'd still be alive, even if he were stoned, had there been no War on Drugs. How many other American families could tell a similar tale, we may never know.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com

To: William Tell
Yeah yeah, but the problem is that YOUR side says laws don't stop anything. If the drug rates aren't going to change, then this shouldn't be an issue. You can't have it both ways.. Saying how wonderful the world will be with easy to get heroin or whatever and then denying that any damage will occur because the laws will save us. What a joke.
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I don't use drugs of any kind, and I think our illegal Drug War is hurting our free society.

I don't think that our world will be better when drugs are "easy to get," I think that our world will be better when we aren't persecuted by our government for the drug use of other people.

As I said, I don't use drugs myself, but still I must pay higher-than-necessary taxes to enforce what I know to be illegal laws against drug use, and further, I must watch helplessly as my government violates the Bll of Rights in order to conduct that "war," thereby violating everyone's rights, not just the rights of drug users.

Wrong.

We're saying the War on Drugs creates more problems than it solves.

This is essentially untrue for *most* other forms of law enforcement that pursue people who commit actual crimes against people other than themselves.

It should seem pretty clear that hasing down murderers, confidence men, rapists, and muggers does NOT create more problems than it solves as they and their victims are essentially the only people involved in the process. For your War on Drugs...*everybody* suffers as laws are sidestepped, requirements for warrants, the confiscation of property, and the relaxation of limits against use of lethal force detrimentally impact the liberty of innocent bystanders.