Legalize Drugs?

[rockford2]

what if we legalized all street drugs?

More kids would decide to try drugs "just once," and more would get hooked. Some lives would be ruined. But other lives would be saved. Gang murders would fall sharply. Thousands of people now in jail would be free to find work and feed their families. We'd save billions on the war on drugs, and a new drug industry would create jobs and loads of taxable revenue.

Of course, it may sound like madness. And the gut feeling among many people is that it would be disastrous.

Don Semesky, the former chief of financial operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington, D.C., asks: "Have you ever seen a meth addict, with all those sores and rotten teeth? And what they do to their kids? Do you want the government to be responsible for that?"

At first glance, on a "strictly numbers" basis, the effect on the country's pocketbook looks promising. We'd see:

Savings on drug-related law enforcement -- FBI, police, courts and prisons -- of $2 billion to $10 billion a year if marijuana were legalized, based on various estimates, or up to $40 billion a year if all drugs were legalized, based on enforcement costs from the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. That's before the cost of overseeing the new drug regulations.

Increased productivity as fewer people were murdered, drug offenders were freed to find work and those stripped of their criminal record found it easier to get jobs (including running drug boutiques). However, how many of those now in prison would turn away from crime is unknown.

Tax gains. Drug prices would have to fall sharply in order to squeeze out the black market. Still, Jeffrey Miron, a senior lecturer in economics for Harvard University, calculates the $10 billion-plus U.S. marijuana market could reap $6 billion in annual taxes. The $65 billion market for all illicit drugs, he estimates, might bring in $10 billion to $15 billion in taxes.

A new legal drug industry would create jobs, farm crops, retail outlets and a tiny notch up in gross domestic product as the black market money turned clean. A 1994 study by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Washington, D.C., suggested 100,000 jobs and 60,000 retailers could emerge from a legal marijuana industry.

So, seemingly we'd get a shower of money for the government coffers -- perhaps an initial $50 billion under the "all drugs" scenario -- and gains for business and the community. But at what cost?

The answer is that it all depends, mostly on how many more people would use drugs, which drugs and how much more they used.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/CollegeAndFamily/RaiseKids/WhatIfWeLegalizedAllDrugs.aspx


So folks, what is your opinion?

[janicelee]

My feelings on this one are very complex. I am in favor of legalizing pot, and a handful of other drugs. Admittedly, the drugs I would make legal are all drugs I tried in my happily misspent youth. There may be a fairly high hypocrisy factor in me saying that a certain drug is okay because I tried it and liked it and didn't get addicted. On the other hand I don’t look forward to the idea of heroin and meth being legal, to name just two.

I think the problem is that we lump everything together under the catchall term drugs. Pots, Hash, Peyote, to name a few are not the same as heroin, and the problem is our government keeps trying to say that they are. This has caused an incredible amount of suffering. In addition to sending people who don’t really belong there to jail there is another factor.

I grew up hearing about the evils of pot. When people I knew started trying pot, and didn’t turn into the dope fiends, from Reefer Madness, I like everyone else in my generations started wondering what else we’d been lied to about. Some of us stopped at the right time, we didn’t get into the seriously addictive drugs. Others, less lucky or less intelligent perhaps didn’t know when to say no. Yet because we had been given so much bad information about the reality of drugs I can’t completely blame the ones who went on to addictive drugs. After all once you found out that pot wasn’t really addictive to any great degree why would you believe them when they said cocaine was addictive?

To further complicate matters, I’m now staring down the barrel of my nieces and nephews being old enough to do the same stuff I did in my teens and 20’s My sis-in-law Elizabeth, and I are really struggling with this one. She was my running buddy back in the day when we were following the Grateful Dead on tour. While we both consider them the best days of our lives, and would happily, if we were 20 years younger go back and revisit them, Neither one of us is entirely sure we would want the next generation following in our footsteps. In part because we do understand that for whatever reason we didn’t go over the top in our use of drugs, and we can’t be sure that her children, my niece and nephew would know when to stop. A much bigger concern is given the Draconian nature of punishment for drug offenders, the consequences are quite a bit more serious then they were in our day.

I know I’m kind of rambling here, but as I said it’s complicated. I think some drugs ought to be legal others I think no way in this world.

[Alibar]

I think it's a disgrace for police to send a person to jail because of finding a container that smells like pot. And these poor fools who cook meth with so many poisonous materials, and the huffers... legal or illegal, some are going to do it and the people who huff the gold paint aren't going to be cured, I'm told. It's a mess.

One reason I'd like to make drugs legal is to stop the DEA people who are getting rich from the drug market, but, I doubt it will happen because what would all these people do? It's a large agengy. Where would they work? Reminds me of the tobacco industry... nicotine kills, but, not quickly. Families have put their heart and soul into working in tobacco. So many would be out of work. What would they do?

So, what to do? What to do? How long will it be before all work in the USA is out-sourced? It's enough to spur someone to go find some drugs. Well, I take plenty of the legal type, so no one will be knocking on my door unless they've invaded the wrong house.

Talk about rambling! Pardon me. LOL

[rockford2]

Please don't ever feel like any of you is rambling, as I read everything that a person posts, and trust me, maybe 1% was ever thought of as 'rambling.'

That said, I think both of you bring up good points. Not that it really matters, but I'm guessing I am a bit younger than you, Janice, as I never got into the music of The Grateful Dead, Janice Joplin, nor Jimmie Hendrix. I started with Fleetwood Mac, Journey, and Boston. That also said, going to many concerts meant pot smoking. Seeing Stevie Nicks up onstage, you'd have to be pretty stupid not to know that she looked higher than a kite, and pot never did that to anyone I knew of.....more mellowed them out. I, too, never thought that pot smoking was addictive, nor do I see any dangers with it now....unless what happened to my cousin is the majority and not the minority. Somebody laced her joint with something called a 'micro dot' (I'm pretty sure that is what it was called) and I think it was basically acid. She wound up in the hospital.

If we were lied to about the dangers of pot, and our kids, nieces, nephews, want to smoke pot now, and WE tell them, "no" then aren't we just as guilty for either lying or being hyprocrites?

Maybe that is what OUR generation was trying to do.....protect us, like we want to protect our loved ones? :shrug1:

if we legalize drugs, then maybe there wouldn't be so much killings over a drug deal gone bad, because you might see "Ma and Pa' shops popping up just to purchase drugs. I DON'T think I'm ready for that!

[rockford2]

one other thing I forgot to mention. If we all listened to what was preached to us and never thought to think for ourselves, we'd still be 'hiding' in the closet about our sexuality, women would STILL need (if married) our husband's signature before purchasing cars, homes, we'd all might be in aprons still, and some might still be treated like something owned.

We have to trust OUR kids to make the right choices as OUR parents once did.

[wheezer]

Tough One.
Pot I see no issue with at all.
Cocaine, Meth, Heroine, I think we almost have to keep them as Illegal. The consequences of addiction with these IMO far out weigh anything positive.
Now someone might be able to counter me with Cigarettes. Very addictive. Very dangerous to your health. But, usually long term, and the addiction does not usually alter behavior. Might make you a little pi**y to deal with, but the withdrawals do not cause you to steal or even hurt someone in order to feed that addiction.

For me Pot and Cigarettes tend to be in the same category. I view someone smoking Pot as no different than someone who has had a few drinks. Except usually the person who smoked the pot is way less obnoxious.

[rockford2]

Tough One.
Pot I see no issue with at all.
Cocaine, Meth, Heroine, I think we almost have to keep them as Illegal. The consequences of addiction with these IMO far out weigh anything positive.
Now someone might be able to counter me with Cigarettes. Very addictive. Very dangerous to your health. But, usually long term, and the addiction does not usually alter behavior. Might make you a little pi**y to deal with, but the withdrawals do not cause you to steal or even hurt someone in order to feed that addiction.

For me Pot and Cigarettes tend to be in the same category. I view someone smoking Pot as no different than someone who has had a few drinks. Except usually the person who smoked the pot is way less obnoxious.

and you can probably smoke pot and NOT need a designated driver! :104511:

[delilah]

Wow! Great topic! We could all tell the tales of our misspent youth! I am a child of the 60's so very familiar with the drugs of the day including LSD. Some tend to grow away from the culture and grow up to be productive citizens, while others just don't want to grow up and continue using.

I say legalize it all...regulate it, tax it and do away with all of the agencies costing us money to fight it. Drugs are a losing battle and a selected few are making money off of it, including our own government. While some people can freely walk away from addictions, others can't or won't, and they are going to get their drug of choice whether it is legal or not.

Regulating the manufacturing process would probably produce a purer product without all of the crap that dealers put into the cuts of street drugs. The additives alone are lethal!

I have seen my share of addicts and most are also alchoholics, so to me, one hand washes the other in that case. Most start out as drinkers and the booze goes along with the drugs. I know of one person that really doesn't drink all that much but when he has a few beers in him, next thing you know he is out looking for crack! So that says to me that if we are regulating and taxing the booze, we can do the same for drugs.

And, no, I do not use and don't hang with people who do. Gave it all up in 1970, grew up had a family and lived happily ever after without it, but did my share back in the day!

Just think of how many tax dollars are spent on putting petty dealers in prison, the payroll for the government agencies involved in catching them, and all of the rehab centers! Its already big business, but you and I are paying the price for it. Besides the pharmeceutical companies are already doing it and pushing their drugs on us by advertising on TV! What's the difference? Drugs are here to stay, legal or illegal, Americans have been programmed to take a pill and make it feel better!