Quote:
Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis
The problem with my argument is the only way to see if it works is to legalize drugs, so obviously actually getting to test the theory is going to be impossible. But what I can prove is the number of murders Mexico has had since 2008:
6,844 killed in 2008
9,635 killed in 2009
15,273 killed in 2010
16,466 killed in 2011
I suppose the question that it comes back to is: Do you think the murder rate will remain to same or rise because of legalization? If the answer is no then why would legalizing be a bad thing? If you think yes, I'm very curious as to why you think so?
Drugs are already readily available, so thats irrelavent. And again, most people don't do heroin now because its been proven to be a destrutive drug, not because its illegal. Making it legal is not all of a sudden going to cause Joe Straightedge to start shooting up just because he legally can.
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You really think its that simple, those drug based gangs won't throw in the towel, if anything they would either fight over a smaller market and it would get far more vicious. Or they would find other illegal high reward markets to develop.
the gangs in Vancouver who make a fortune in drugs wouldn't retire to Monaco, they'd work on developing other markets as well. Or they'd find other drugs. Or modify existing drugs or cheaper drugs.
Legalizing all drugs isn't a save all solution. One of the reason why people point to Europe's legalziation of some drugs is that they're not dealing with the same cartels and gangs as we are here.
I would plainly state that if you legalized drugs and taxed them then the cartels would cut their profits underneath the governments on the hard drugs. If you legalized drugs here and the market did start to shrink the wars would become far more vicious as they fight over a shrinking market and then transition to human smuggling and gun smuggling for example to make up for lost income.
Like I said, I would be fine with legalizing grass, as long as it takes it out of the hands of the drug cartels and dealers, we get quality control at a governmental level, tax it like booze or smokes, and put it in liquor stores out of the hands of pre-adults. Then you take the tax revenue and use it towards rehab programs and use it to go after the really nasty drugs.
But legalizing instantly addictive, really harmful drugs like Crack or Xtacy, or heroin or Meth is both morallly repugnant as the government shouldn't be in that kind of business, and destructive to the core group of users who are rotting away because of that.
But any war on drugs needs to change focus from the user to the dealers who profit on human misery to the smugglers who bring it in to the #######s cooking that stuff up in their bathrooms.
I feel tremendously sorry for the people that are hooked on crack and these other really bad drugs, but can we really point to the educational programs as being all that successful either?
I don't think there's a question that these drugs are toxic and instantly addictive, but people still take them.