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I'll have to play both sides here. On the pro-legalization side, there is no question that WOD is Prohibition of the 20's and 30's transplanted to today with almost identical effects. It finances a number of powerful criminal empires and it drives a high percentage of the robberies, burglaries, muggings, etc. that are perpetrated by users trying to get enough money for their next fix. So what would we get if these drugs were legal? On the relatively harmless side, the crackheads might very well take their places alongside the winos on skid-row, and finance their habits with aluminum cans and odd jobs until their hearts explode or they meet their doom in a bumfight. On the more harmful side, the fear is that we would get the same really bad things that we now have with legal alcohol. Even now, about 20,000 people are killed on the highways every year by drunk drivers, down from almost 30,000 per year a few decades ago before we started to get serious about drunk drivers. Another well known problem is the dramatic drop in IQ and good judgement that occurs when people drink past "moderation" and the various acts of stupidity and criminality that occur as a result. The only way to combat the feared increase in this sort of thing is to attack both drug and alcohol mis-use from the demand side. The reduction in highway deaths due to alcohol indicates the possibilities here. The full force of the law must hammer the crap out of DUI's and abusers who endanger or harm others. Various barriers to getting a good job like drug/alcohol testing in the work-place should be allowed by any organization who wishes to blatantly discriminate for any reason against drug users and alcohol abusers. Drug use or alcohol abuse should be a legal cause for immediate revocation of child custody/visitation rights or any other desired privileges like driver's licenses, insurance policies, loan approvals, etc. These are things that should be made ALLOWABLE FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION by organizations other than criminal law enforcement. The fear of those who oppose legalization is that this won't happen and people will not be held accountable for their drug- or alcohol-fueled behavior that endangers or harms the innocent.