not only in the states. globally such measures must be taken to cripple the crime organizations.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

And would lower the incarceration rate considerably.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

That doesn't mean people should do drugs.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Nobody should do a lot of things, that doesn't mean there aren't better ways to deal with how they will do them.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Of course it would curb crime! When something is no longer considered a crime it isn't accounted for in crime rates, and essentially lowering the crime rate. However if the government taxes and controls drugs then it benefits from it and drug users can stop complaining. However, I'm only referring to the softer drugs with negligible effects.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I mean violence and theft. A lot less people would be getting killed if the money shifted from the cartels to the Government. The cartels have a lot of weaponry and kill a lot of people. The cartels would also disappear, since their biggest source of income is drugs. All of their other sources would be depleted since the police no longer have to worry about drug-related crime and could focus on other things. They could focus on kidnappings and human-trafficking. People rob other people because they are low on money. Many people are low on money because they spend all of it on drugs. Drugs are extremely expensive because they are illegal. If they were legal, the price would go down substantially, and people wouldn't go broke supporting their drug habits. Then they wouldn't have to steal. There would also be a ton of jobs open for making, distributing, and selling the new products, so employment would drop a little.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

The US is not geared up for the government to run this operation, it would fall to the private sector, most likely the pharmacological industry unless the alcohol or tobacco companies moved fast. There would still be a huge black market like there is now for cigarettes. ATF would probably pick up the oversight.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

It might not be an immediate change, but it would happen. Drug addicts tend to be idiots, but I doubt even they would still go to their shady dealer and pay money for a massively marked-up price of inferior quality rather than pay less money for a pure product at a store. Is there really a black market for cigarettes? I was going to say you don't really hear of people dealing alcohol and cigarettes on the street corner.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I just looked into it. That's pretty interesting, but it stays somewhat within the confines of my point. The cigarettes being sold are bought legally from stores, not being made illegally. We should do something about that, too, though.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Agreed, people should be able to grow their own tobacco like they can brew beer or bottle wine.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Actually I'm curious to see the deaths related to it and I'm wondering if the number is they significant?

by Anonymous 12 years ago

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-01-29-ms13_N.htm

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Well this doesn't really specify what drugs and it doesn't necessary say that all gangs are created to sell illicit drugs, and I wonder what type of limit would have to be set for what drugs would be acceptable. In your opinion what drugs do you think should be illegal/legal? Like what lines need to be drawn

by Anonymous 12 years ago

You didn't specify what you were talking about, so I assumed you were talking about gang-related crime. There are roughly 12,000 deaths from illegal drugs in the United States per year. Most of these are from overdose. One thing we can be sure of is that this number will go down. There are safe-injection sites where people can go to use heroin and other injected drugs safely. They provide sterile equipment and medical support. At these sites, nobody has ever died of overdose, and they don't get the diseases spread by needle-sharing. I think all drugs should be legal, period. They should have similar limits put on their use to tobacco and alcohol. That's it.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Well the thing with more harmful drugs, (and forgive my ignorance in some of their side effects as I'm not incredibly learned on the subject) however they are quite addictive, and have quite detrimental effects on the body that can destroy a person much quicker then say tobacco and alcohol. However, we have safe injection sides in Canada were people can me moderated and stuff, I wonder if this will still cause people to be addicted and if people will still continue to harm themselves and others. Lets say these things close for like 2 weeks of the year or only open for like 18 hours in the day, I wonder if that would deter people from using or if just go crazy and maybe end up overdosing or something? These are just all hypothetical scenarios because opening it 24/7 is unrealistic.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Sites*

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Believe it or not, the more harmful drugs aren't all that harmful compared to alcohol and tobacco. The effects themselves aren't that bad, what is bad is all the contamination. When you purchase a legal product, you get the reassurance of every ingredient being listed on the package, and the reassurance that every ingredient has been officially declared okay to use in a consumable product. When buying illegal drugs, you deal with impure chemicals made by shady people in make-shift labs that have less than half an idea what they're doing, them they cut it with whatever they find under the sink to make more of a profit per weight. This can be seen with alcohol. Nowadays, you could buy some alcohol and drink it without fear. Back when alcohol was illegal, it was often poorly made and contained methanol which will make you blind and kill you in small doses. The drugs wouldn't necessarily be any less addictive, but they'd be devoid of all of these toxic byproducts if they were legal.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I apologize for using wiki but this graph kind of shows all their effects: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg I think for softer drugs(like cannabis) that there is benefit to legalize it however, with the more addictive drugs I don't like the idea of legalizing them because, as a society then we've placed an acceptance of being addicted to drugs which then they use tax dollars for health care or social assistance, so essentially I'm not paying for someone else to abuse drugs but idk. It's interesting to talk about

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Don't be sorry, I love wiki. The catch is that the graph was more than likely using data collected from people using the street drugs, thus not an accurate representation of how dangerous they actually are. We are already paying for that kind of thing. Tobacco is easily as addictive as heroin, and alcohol is particularly bad because the withdrawals from it can kill you; this is not true with many other drugs. The biggest problem I have with keeping anything illegal is that the crime and danger won't disappear until EVERYTHING is legal. If you are trying to smother a fire, it won't go out until //all// of the oxygen is cut off.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

It was probably made in a controlled environment so that it can be accurate. Alot of drugs can kill you in the detox because the body is so dependent on it. Also the qualitative and quantitative costs would have to be weighed because it could be that doing all this is not very efficient and that perhaps making it illegal is better for the government.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Actually, only alcohol and benzodiazepines can cause fatal withdrawals. I clicked on the graph itself, and found a discussion about it. A lot of people are disputing the graph's reliability and calling it a joke. I'd say there's no way it could end badly for the government. Some places already have drugs decriminalized, even the hard ones. They experienced a massive decline in problematic users (addicts).

by Anonymous 12 years ago

My faith in humanity is dying due to the people disagreeing with this.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I support this 100%. Too bad it'll never happen... haha.

by Anonymous 12 years ago