Reply #53: Good question. [View All]

It doesn't serve us well to ignore the real negative effects of drug abuse or addiction. Doing stimulants for days at a time can make you pretty crazy and unpredictable. Doing too much of an opiate can kill you. Drinking alcohol and driving is a recipe for disaster.

All of those negative effects would not go away if drugs were legal.

But so many other negative effects would: the loss of liberties and growth of the police state, the acquisitive crime of junkies paying black market prices for drugs, the structural crime of drug sellers adjudicating disputes with guns (because, being outside the law, they can't sue), the spread of HIV/AIDS through dirty needles, etc.

We're spending nearly $40 billion a year, state and federal, to enforce the drug laws. With a tiny fraction of that, we could really start to address the harms related to drug use (and not caused by drug prohibition).