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And what percentage of drinkers become alcoholics?

The question of drug legalization turns not on whether drugs are bad for their users — they are — but whether the harms to society created by having the government not treat psychoactive substances as a criminal matter (basically an uptick in the number of people ruining their lives, and indirectly the lives of those around them by using drugs) are greater or less than the harms created by treating use of and trade in psychoactive substances as a matter of criminal law (erosion of civil liberties through increasingly drastic enforcement measures like no-knock raids and asset forfeiture laws, creating a cash-flow for ruthless and often terrorist-linked criminal enterprises, lack of quality control of the the product leading to dangers to users besides those inherent in the use of psychoactive drugs, black-market premium pricing of drugs leading to property crime to support habits, defining users to be criminals thereby preventing them from seeking medical help for their habit,...)

Psychoactive recreational drugs are bad. Keeping them illegal makes them worse, not just for the users, but for society as a whole.

That’s the serious argument — not “pro-dope” just anti-drug-war — not turning at all on the notion that one’s body is one’s own and one can ingest or inhale what one want (that’ a “pro-dope” argument), just that making them illegal rather than treating them the way we treat alcohol and tobacco, creates worse problems than it solves.

Honestly the only bright line I can find between the psychoactive drugs we’ve chosen to keep legal (alcohol, nicotine and caffeine) and those we’ve outlawed is that the former were popular in Europe at the time of the American Founding. None of the dire things drug warriors predict would happen under legalization were true in the 19th century when the government didn’t prevent trade in or use of marijuana, peyote, cocaine or opiates, includ laudanum (tincture of opium) which was suprisingly popular.

It actually surprises me the degree to which conservatives now champion what was originally a left-wing progressive cause: drug prohibition, like the income tax, direct election of Senators, moralizing foreign policy devoid of connection to American national interests and the Federal Reserve is one of the baleful legacies of Woodrow Wilson’s administration.

making them illegal rather than treating them the way we treat alcohol and tobacco, creates worse problems than it solves.

It actually surprises me the degree to which conservatives now champion what was originally a left-wing progressive cause

Excellent post! My only caveat is that ownership of one's own body is neither unserious nor "pro-dope" - though I will agree that if criminalization was applied only to the nastiest drugs (e.g., meth) and was successful, I'd be roughly as concerned about that violation of bodily ownership as I am about public ownership of sidewalks.

Alcohol and drugs are mutually exclusive. We tried banning alcohol once, remember? People can drink without the goal of mind alteration (ie, getting drunk)

Just because one is harmful doesn’t justify adding another harm. Don’t we have enough cultural/behavioral problems without adding more? Legalization isn’t the answer, all it would do is create more dependencies and addictions and a host of political problems.

We did fine without dope in the 60s. Then came the 70s and all the associated problems. Ban it for good, get rid of it. It’s simply not worth the costs.

Psychoactive recreational drugs are bad. Keeping them illegal makes them worse, not just for the users, but for society as a whole.

Yeah, except for the fact that history doesn't agree with your theory there. China did it your way, and it collapsed. A small scale experiment in Zurich Switzerland did it your way and also collapsed.

This is what it looked like before they re-criminalized it.

None of the dire things drug warriors predict would happen under legalization were true in the 19th century when the government didn’t prevent trade in or use of marijuana, peyote, cocaine or opiates, includ laudanum (tincture of opium) which was suprisingly popular.

And about this you do not know what you are talking about. You are simply repeating the endless Libertarian drivel on the subject. Drugs were neither widely known or widely available prior to the civil war. The ones that were known were rightly considered medicines and used for medicinal purposes.

During the civil war, there started to be greatly increased demand for Opiates and Cocanoids to be used as pain killers. After the civil war, the nation had 400,000 addicts on both sides. Shortly thereafter Pemberton started marketing his French Wine Coca which was becoming increasingly popular, and later he came out with Coca Cola which gave everyone a nice dose of cocaine in every drink.

The problems with drug addiction were just getting started by the 1890s when Doctors started writing about various addictions.

It is literally a bald faced lie to keep repeating that garbage about the stuff being legal and there were no problems. Yes, there were problems, and they were getting worse with each passing year, but the Drug legalizers simply keep repeating that same crap, and they have now got so many people believing it who ought to know better.

Just what the F*** do you think would have happened had Coca Cola continued to contain cocaine? Do you really think that we wouldn't have had a huge mass of the population addicted to the sh*t?

Un-Freakin-real what some people are willing to believe.