[Senator Clay Davis]

GP_Matt has it dead on. The current system isn't working and is far too costly. You will never convince me legalizing heroin or cocaine will all of a sudden have everyone doing them like alcohol or cigarettes. Its easy enough to get now that the people who want to do it will. Like when alcohol was prohibited, the people who really wanted to drink still did, and those people I would call alcoholics if they need something illegal so badly (since of course all users of drugs are dopers or druggies or whatever).

When prohibition ended I don't think there was some huge spike in the number of alcoholics, and since people know if they do heroin or cocaine once they could end up addicted, I don't expect people will just say "Well I didn't do it before because I didn't want to end up a junkie, but now that its legal I will!". Making drugs legal doesn't make the drugs themselves less dangerous, it just means we aren't wasting billions on an unwinable pursuit.