Prohibition only creates crime and related social harms. This was the case in the 1920s with alcohol, and it is the case now with currently illegal drugs. It does not matter if you are for or against people using drugs. Prohibition does NOT WORK, and it costs far too much to continue.

I never really thought it through when I was younger. It was very simple to me: Drugs are bad, therefore they should be illegal. That was all of the thought I put into it, because I did not think beyond the propaganda that I heard every day in school. I did not think about all of the problems that prohibition causes (even though I had studied prohibition at one point), and I think that most people are pretty much brainwashed by the same propaganda, so most of us don’t bother to think about the negative impact that the “WAR ON DRUGS” has on our society.

If you do not think we should change the laws, then you support drug UNcontrol. Prohibition means NO regulation, and NO control because drugs are pushed underground into criminality. Prohibition does not stop people from making, selling, buying or using drugs. All it does is make drugs impossible to control. The most optimistic reports show that we only interdict 10-15% of drug traffic. That means that prohibition is 85% to 90% ineffective. That also means that we have NO control over recreational substances.

It does not matter if you are for or against drug use. Prohibition is an abject failure. If we put a stop to this irresponsible and detrimental “WAR”, our country could experience a huge DECREASE in:

-Crime (Crime is higher as a result of the war on drugs. In particular, homicides have skyrocketed – 10 per 100,000 – the only other time the homicide rate was so high was during alcohol prohibition. After prohibition, the murder rates dropped by more than HALF)

-Disease and,

-Government Spending (A RAND corporation study showed that each dollar spent on education and treatment is 7 times more effective than a dollar spent on criminal interdiction, yet we spend more than 45 BILLION DOLLARS per year on criminal interdiction and incarceration costs, and less than 4 billion dollars on education, treatment, and prevention.
),

-Prison Population (According to the American Corrections Association, the average daily cost per state prison inmate per day in the US in 2005 was $67.55. That means it costs states approximately $16,948,295 per day to imprison drug offenders, or $6,186,127,675 per year),

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/prison.htm

-Gangs and Organized Crime (gangs are a product of drug prohibition),

-Corrupt Police (Who wants to live in a police state?),

-Drug Trafficking (obvious reasons),

-Drugs Use among Teens (Drug use INCREASED 7 fold among 12-17 year olds after the modern War on Drugs started. The economics of prohibition favors the targeting of youths. Drug dealers don’t ask for ID),

-Graffiti (Gang tagging creates an enormous graffiti problem causing millions of dollars in damage every year. The gangs are a product of drug prohibition)

-Deaths due to overdose,

-car accidents caused by high speed chases (Where a driver is afraid of being caught with illegal drugs),

-divorce rate (parents would not be separated from the family due to petty possession convictions),

-GUN CONTROL – we have increasingly strict gun control laws because the crime wave that rides on prohibition has caused huge public outcry. Rather than focus on the cause of crime (socioeconomic factors of the drug war are a major component), the public and legislators lash out at gun owners. This would practically REMOVE the government’s pretext to ban guns!

Since Nixon started the modern war on drugs, use among teens is up 7 times. This is because the black market created by prohibition makes underage teens a very easy target. The result is that illegal drugs run rampant through every high school in America. But alcohol, as a legal drug, is much harder for a minor to obtain.

We must remove the profit incentive in the black market for recreational substances – the only way to do that is to end prohibition and replace it with regulation. Congress is granted the power to “regulate commerce”. “Regulate”, to the writers of the Constitution, meant to facilitate the proper functioning of, as when someone regulates a clock to keep proper time, or the barrels of a double rifle to hit the same point of aim

The Rand corporation’s study showed that every dollar spent on education or treatment programs is 7 times more effective that a dollar spent on criminal interdictions. If recreational substances were made available through a regulated and taxed means, just like alcohol, we could focus far more money on education and treatment and as a result, lower drug use and provide for a healthier society. The resultant reduction in crime will provide safer streets for police and citizens, and allow the police to concentrate on real crimes, such as violent crimes. This was one of the rationales behind the repeal of Alcohol Prohibition, and it is still a good idea.

In Holland where both Marijuana and Heroin are legally available, they have HALF the percentage of Marijuana users as in the US, and a THIRD the percentage of heroin users. If heroin were legal tomorrow would you shoot up? No, neither would I. The people that would use heroin already use it, and obtain it through the black market. Available through regulated channels, it would simply end the crime ridden black markets, and promote a healthy environment free of HIV, AIDS, Hepatitis and overdoses.

Prohibition policies are based on fiction. They destroy society by creating an environment of crime and corruption, as well as giving government “Big Brother” powers over the lives, recreational habits, and choices of all citizens.

And prohibition policies create vast bureaucracies. And the lies and propaganda which these bureaucracies must create and disseminate, in order to prop up their fiction, can cause aware and thinking people to develop a tragic deep and permanent distrust of the government, of the hardworking people in law enforcement, and of the political process.

Prohibition and the forces that support it are enemies of liberty and domestic tranquility. While there may be issues with the use, and sometimes abuse, of various recreational drugs like alcohol, those issues and those people that abuse should be dealt with directly, instead of creating an unregulated black market that feeds the mouth of crime. That is all prohibition has ever done, and will ever do.

http://www.drugwarfaq.com/

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/prison.htm

The first web site is very informative about the considerable number of problems that the “WAR ON DRUGS” has given us. I recommend that you read it in its entirety. I do not agree with everything he says, but there is a lot of good info there.