Legalization ?
Regulate is the best IMO. Though drugs may not have the social acceptance of tobacco or alcohol, to treat them significantly different is tremendously wasteful.
WE ARE speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $70 billion a year from consumers,
is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 per cent of the trial time of our judiciary, and
takes the time of 400,000 policemen -- yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect. Wm Buckley
The number of drug deaths in the US in a typical year is as follows:
Tobacco kills about 390,000.
Alcohol kills about 80,000.
Sidestream smoke from tobacco kills about 50,000.
Cocaine kills about 2,200.
Heroin kills about 2,000.
Aspirin kills about 2,000.
Marijuana kills 0. There has never been a recorded death due to marijuana at any time in US history.
All illegal drugs combined kill about 4,500 people per year, or about one percent of the number killed by alcohol and tobacco. Tobacco kills
more people each year than all of the people killed by all of the illegal drugs in the last century.
Source: NIDA Research Monographs
The peripheral damage is much greater than the direct damage. Alcohol and tobacco are regulated and I think a good starting place to mitigate the drug problem is to put them in this same class.
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