The majority of people, through the power of the government, have decided they don’t want me to choose to do drugs if I want, prostitute, gamble if I wanted to.

I am a grown man, yet they intend to protect me from myself by taking away the liberty to choose for myself; and If I don’t like it, then I should leave America?
…America was formed on the philosophy of liberty. I have a right to choose, and if I choose wrong then I suffer the consequences… yet many American people believe their tax dollars should go to my arrest, conviction and incarceration for smoking marijuana. So it is not I ‘suffering’ any longer, it is all of America.

The cost to put a single drug dealer in jail is about $450,000, composed of the following: The cost for arrest and conviction is about $150,000. The cost for an additional prison bed is about $50,000 to $150,000, depending upon the jurisdiction. It costs about $30,000 per year to house a prisoner. With an average sentence of 5 years, that adds up to another $150,000. The same $450,000 can provide treatment or education for about 200 people. In addition, putting a person in prison produces about fifteen dollars in related welfare costs, for every dollar spent on incarceration. Every dollar spent on treatment and education saves about five dollars in related welfare costs.

Thats good money the government could instead use to educate people of the United States on the bad effects of drugs, so why not legalize drugs, put them on the open market, and stop the homicides and theft created by drug wars? Or was Nobel-prize winning economist, Milton Friedman wrong?

“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.” — Milton Friedman

“I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my value system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.” — Milton Friedman

“If the government is to try and ban private consumption of alcohol and tobacco, it must surely ban such activities as hang-gliding, skiing, rock-climbing and so on. Where should it stop? Rugby? American Football? Ice Hockey? Insofar as the government has information not generally available about the merits or demerits of the items we ingest or the activities we engage in, let it give us the information. But let it leave us free to choose what chances we want to take with our own lives.” — Milton Friedman
Are these not the principles and philosophies of liberty that our nation was founded on?
latj, Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have

Yes, people will end up dead, but that is their choice, they are the owners of their lives, no one else

There are no violent gangs fighting over aspirin territories. There are no violent gangs fighting over whisky territories or computer territories or anything else that’s legal. There are only criminal gangs fighting over territories covering drugs, gambling, prostitution, and other victimless crimes. Making a non-violent activity a crime creates a black market, which attracts criminals and gangs, which turns what was once a relatively harmless activity affecting a small group of people into a widespread epidemic of drug use and gang warfare
I don’t want to live in a society without rules, I wan’t to live in a society without restrictions on how I should live my life. The government has one purpose; to protect the liberties of everyone from anyone else, not to protect ourselves from ourselves