re: Would drug legalization increase the frequency of overdoses?

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You got addicted to drugs...its not your fault its a disease...lets use tax money to pay for rehab centers, welfare, medicaid, and free housing for you just because you screwed up your life.

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It seems your major argument is if we legalize drugs then we will save money because we won't be prosecuting drug crimes.

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Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard who studies drug policy closely, has suggested that legalizing all illicit drugs would produce net benefits to the United States of some $65 billion a year, mostly by cutting public spending on enforcement as well as through reduced crime and corruption.

A study by analysts at the RAND Corporation, a California research organization, suggested that if marijuana were legalized in California and the drug spilled from there to other states, Mexican drug cartels would lose about a fifth of their annual income of some $6.5 billion from illegal exports to the United States.

A growing array of Latin American presidents have asked for the United States to consider legalizing some drugs, like marijuana. Even Mr. Calderón is realizing the futility of the war against the narco-syndicates. He asked President Obama and the United States Congress last month to consider “market solutions” to reduce the cash flow to criminal groups.

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President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs" in 1971. The expectation then was that drug trafficking in the United States could be greatly reduced in a short time through federal policing—and yet the war on drugs continues to this day. The cost has been large in terms of lives, money and the well-being of many Americans, especially the poor and less educated. By most accounts, the gains from the war have been modest at best.

The direct monetary cost to American taxpayers of the war on drugs includes spending on police, the court personnel used to try drug users and traffickers, and the guards and other resources spent on imprisoning and punishing those convicted of drug offenses. Total current spending is estimated at over $40 billion a year.

These costs don't include many other harmful effects of the war on drugs that are difficult to quantify. For example, over the past 40 years the fraction of students who have dropped out of American high schools has remained large, at about 25%. Dropout rates are not high for middle-class white children, but they are very high for black and Hispanic children living in poor neighborhoods. Many factors explain the high dropout rates, especially bad schools and weak family support. But another important factor in inner-city neighborhoods is the temptation to drop out of school in order to profit from the drug trade.

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The total number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the U.S. has grown from 330,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million today. Much of the increase in this population is directly due to the war on drugs and the severe punishment for persons convicted of drug trafficking. About 50% of the inmates in federal prisons and 20% of those in state prisons have been convicted of either selling or using drugs. The many minor drug traffickers and drug users who spend time in jail find fewer opportunities for legal employment after they get out of prison, and they develop better skills at criminal activities.

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But the tide may be turning. At a Republican primary debate in South Carolina last May, Ron Paul likened the freedom to use drugs to the freedom to worship according to one’s faith, a radical insight about the liberty of conscience usually heard mainly from proud proponents of psycho-pharmacological experimentation. Moderator Chris Wallace asked the Texas congressman whether using heroin was simply an “an exercise of liberty.” Paul responded with a rhetorical question: “How many people here would use heroin if it were legal?” He mocked the very idea of paternalistic prohibition: “Oh yeah, I need the government to take care of me. I don’t want to use heroin, so I need these laws.”

The audience erupted in laughter and enthusiastic applause. Many of Paul’s supporters sat in the crowd, but more important was the lack of booing from the more conventionally conservative attendees. In this Republican audience in a right-leaning state, some of the most radical arguments for heroin legalization fared surprisingly well. Even if today’s conservatives do not buy into all the reasons to end prohibition, they no longer find them as dangerous or worthy of ridicule as in years past.

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But “conservatives” have often cheered the drug war started by President Nixon and given new life by President Reagan, to the detriment of the rule of law. Our Constitution was written to limit the efforts of the federal government. Drug regulation under the Constitution, is something relegated to the states. The DEA is about the last thing the founding fathers would have ever wanted for this country. Yet, many who have trumpeted the Constitution and its limits on federal power have continued to support the “War on Drugs” and other federal efforts to legislate morality.

George Will says that this needs to change.

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I've said this 20 times in this thread and everyome ignores it. They think half the inmate population is in for getting high.

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Again, most inmates serving time have lengthy criminal histories. Most would still be in jail for just a different crime.

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Its not a drug problem its a propensity to break the law problem. Its a want everything for nothing problem. Its a not willing to work hard to be successful problem.

Legalizing drugs will not correct that

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Local police departments are getting paid federal money for making pot bust, and it's not uncommon for them to hit the wrong house, and people wind up getting hurt and killed, over pot prohibition. It's wrong.

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The idea of legalizing them is insane

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Does it help society to have a large portion of drug users.

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Drug use is not the root of our problems but it does compound those problems.

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Are you a big government liberal? Because that's how they think

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If they just kill themselves, I'm all for it. Unfortunately, they don't just kill themselves. And that fact makes it a societal problem.

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