Those are valid points.
They are also valid points to ban alcohol, tobacco, and many other things.
You're right, nobody lives in total isolation. There is no encapsulation.
It's a philosophical decision of where to draw the line. Right now, the line is drawn with marijuana on one side and alcohol and tobacco on the other. Personally, I think that line is nuts. There is much more basis both in chemistry and on our roads for restoring prohibition than there is for restricting marijuana. I have had to deal with the effects of alcohol use in families quite a lot, and our teachers and schools regular deal with innocent children whose parents, by their chosen lifestyles, burdened them with fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effect.
One can say, of course, that just because we allow some bad things to be used we shouldn't add others to the mix and make it worse. But I think that's overly paternalistic on the government's part. Plus, as X noted, the cost of the Drug War, both in money, court resources, prison costs (on the order of $40,000 per year per person in prison, and the civil liberties intrusions, are high. IMO, too high.
Those countries which have legalized drugs, most notably Holland, have less of a problem with crime than we do. I know there are all sorts of other social factors going on there, but the argument that legalizing drugs will lead to rampant increases in crime, addiction, etc. so far haven't held up in the countries where drugs are legal and regulated as we legalize and regulate alcohol and tobacco.
Yes, there will be some negative effects, though I think they will be fewer than we have now and less severe. We will see an end to drive-by shootings by drug cartels in our cities because legalization will put the drug cartels out of business. We won't have to jail hundreds of young blacks for selling crack on street corners in D.C. and elsewhere. We won't have to poison the fields and children of poor farmers who are growing cocaine because it's the crop that pays the most to support them. And we will take a huge bite out of international crime by taking away, in one fell swoop, its most lucrative business. |
