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Originally Posted by rubecube
The logic produced by the anti-legalization crowd, which basically comes down to "well it won't remove every problem, so we shouldn't do it" is assinine. The goal of government and society should be to reduce harm and increase quality of life in as many areas as possible. If legalizing cocaine and heroin results in a 30% decrease in gang violence, and a 20% decrease in incarceration rates, how is that a bad thing?
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Again I don't put a lot of bank into those figures. They're usually based on European markets where they don't have the same gang problems as North American's have.
I don't believe that gangs will just throw up their hands and go away under a legalization market. They will either find or create other products. Or they will put weight on the harvest and manufacturing side of the drug business to bring it down. Or they'll bring in cheap synthetic versions of the drugs that will appeal to the addicts looking to stay out of the public eye and looking for cheap highs.
On top of that there is nothing out there that suggests that medical crack, or Crystal Meth or other hideous drugs that are less harmful to the addict.
I believe that it will also create a major cash market based around prescription fraud.
Legalizing it won't make the problem go away, it will create other worse problems the biggest of which is gangs fighting for a declining market by creating a new market.
Dope is fairly harmless, even though I don't like it in the hands of kids and teenagers, legalize that put it in stores, tax the crap out of it, make it illegal to grow and sell your own unless your a registered business paying taxes. Great, fine.
But a utopian model where people can go and get crack and crystal and heroin from doctors for example is horrible. A governments shouldn't be enabling those type of addictions. B No doctor out there is going to prescribe Crystal Meth or Heroin or Crack to anyone, it goes against their oath.