Ten good reasons to legalize illegal drugs

Current policies related to the war on drugs have proved to be a complete failure. What we see happening in Mexico is a manifestation of those failed policies. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime admit that the global production of cocaine and opium is unchanged from a decade ago and Cannabis usage and production has risen markedly. Here are ten good reasons why legalizing currently illegal drugs would be a more effective way to bring the war on drugs to a satisfactory conclusion:

1. Legalizing currently illegal drugs would allow the government to tax and regulate the drug trade. The US alone spends approximately $40 billion each year trying to prevent the supply of drugs – unsuccessfully.

2. Legalizing currently illegal drugs would destroy the interests of organized crime in the business and reduce the current woeful death toll associated with organized crime’s role in the illegal drug trade.

3. Legalizing currently illegal drugs would make them safer and less prone to contaminations.

4. Legalizing currently illegal drugs would allow the opportunity to deal with addicts properly. Addicts are currently treated as a law and order problem problem, whereas they should be treated as a public-health problem.

5. Legalizing currently illegal drugs would bring to a halt the practice of making criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens, who experiment with drugs or who use such drugs occasionally (such as the current President of the United States who admits to having experimented with illegal drugs).

6. Legalizing currently illegal drugs would ease the burden on over-stretched prison systems. Each year, just in the USA alone, more than 1.5 million citizens are arrested and approximately 500,000 are jailed due to a zero tolerance of illegal drugs.

7. Legalizing currently illegal drugs would allow the government to use funds raised by taxation – as well as the many billions that would be saved by not making drug a law enforcement responsibility - to educate and treat addiction.

8. Legalizing currently illegal drugs would allow the establishment of a pricing structure that balanced the objectives of reducing consumption and discouraging black markets and crime (and other social disorders) that sustain the current illegal trade.

9. Legalizing currently illegal drugs would not necessarily mean more people would use hard drugs. The success in cutting down the use of tobacco in developed countries, where it is similarly taxed and regulated, is testimony to the hopeful possibilities that exist. Even if we concede that some increase in the use of these drug is likely, in my view more people would gain from the improved treatment conditions and education than would suffer.

10. Legalizing currently illegal drugs would release the state from its self imposed mandate of policing individual enjoyments. Many illegal drugs are very dangerous; but most are not – and used only occasionally for social enjoyment (just as alcohol and tobacco are).