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Originally Posted by Igottago
Can you give us a quick idea of what he argues?
I don't think there's any case that hard drugs, legal or illegal, are good for anyone. Maybe that's just me but working near East Hastings and seeing daily a reminder of how these drugs disintegrate human life, has made me a strong opponent of ever making that stuff easy to come by.
Maybe the war on drugs, despite the difficulties, is worth fighting.
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Here's an article he wrote back in 2000 for Slate.com.
Hard to summarize, but basically a reasoned analysis of the social costs being greater than the legalization savings. Increased addicts, decreased production, spread of disease (such as HIV) facilitated by hard drugs etc...
Pretty damning quote here...
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Now what happens? Here is where the only meaningful debate can exist. Do you think that there will be a decrease in drug crime? Maybe—if the crime committed by users seeking money to buy drugs and the dealers protecting their right to sell drugs falls by an amount greater than the increase in crime committed by addicted users who are no longer capable of holding a job. Not all coke or heroin addicts are incapacitated, but a significant fraction—perhaps one-fifth, perhaps more—are. Say we have 1 million users now, with 200,000 of them so dependent on the drug that they are useless for any activity, including holding a job. Now suppose after legalization we have 5 million users, with 1 million totally zonked.
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