Ahh, one of Martz's periodical long posts about drug legalisation. I just couldn't help myself feel compelled to respond to some of his points.
Whilst martz makes some comments which I half agree with, other comments he makes are (to my mind) either wrong, or made where he deliberately chooses to ignore the facts. Whilst the current position in the UK (and my comments are confined to the UK, but might apply to other countries) is far from ideal, legalising drugs (by which I mean chemical substances consumed for no medical reason, but purely for recreation or the "interesting" mental effects they produce) is fraught with problems, some of which others have already touched upon in this thread.
1. Alcohol is currently an aggravating factor in many crimes involving rape or assault. Are we seriously proposing to make additional drugs, many of which have a far greater psychotropic effect than alcohol, widely available?
2. Comments by Martz and others that the risks of cannabis use are "so small as to be insignificant" are either wrong, wishful thinking, or at best naivety, as are comments like "cannabis is much less harmful than tobacco". The simple fact is, no-one has done any proper, controlled, long term studies on the effects of cannabis (or most other recreational drugs) use on the brain or other parts of the body. So we can't just make glib comments like "its basically harmless".
The fact of the matter is, recreational drug use is no-where near as widespread as some people say (or hope?). If herion, crack cocaine, cannabis etc etc were as readily available as alcohol and tobacco, we'd start to see all the same problems (health and social) that we have with alcohol or tobacco, only magnified.
3. If all these drugs were legalised, or made more widely available, expect employers to start introducing regular and mandatory drug testing for all employees. No-one can afford a pilot, bus driver, surgeon, motorist, heavy machinery operator etc etc to be less than 100% sober when on the job. The wider availability of more drugs will result in the rights and freedoms of the non drug taking majority being restricted on the grounds of "safety" by government and employers. Are we willing to accept this trade-off?
4. Taxes will get much higher in "social democracy" countries if more drugs are legalised. Once you have lots more people taking lots more drugs, the health effects on livers, lungs, hearts and brains are going to become obvious, just as they have with alcohol and tobacco. Are the non drug using majority going to be happy to pay ever higher taxes to pay for healthcare for those who do take drugs and end up with health problems?
At the moment, the standard comment by smokers is "I pay my taxes too, which more than covers the cost of NHS treatments for smokers in the UK". This is not true, because there is no "tax hypothecation" in the UK. In other words, whilst tobacco taxes may raise billions of £'s every year, only a fraction of this actually goes to the healthcare budget. If taxes on drugs were hypothecated to healthcare, this might be less of an issue, but it will never happen, so...
Martz made an interesting comment about how people always go for the cheaper option in one of his posts, or something like that. Some might argue that the current methods we use to tackle drugs are the cheaper ones (i.e. more prisons, more police etc). Drugs will never be made available "for free". They might be available "free" to the addict, but somewhere, all those government drug factories, licensed re-sellers, licensing schemes, training schemes for authorised sellers, additional hospitals for the increased numbers of people whose health gets ruined which will arrive with the wider availability of drugs, long term rehabilitation centres (and most addicts will relapse and require multiple long stays in rehabilitation) etc etc etc will all have to be paid for somehow. And that somehow will basically come down to "higher taxes". Are the non drug using majority prepared to pay ever higher taxes so that a selfish few can keep getting their fix?
5. Arguments that legalising drugs will make the criminals go away are pure wishful thinking. Will the criminals really give up their profitable trade without a fight? No chance. They will either move to selling the drugs which are not legalised, move to other types of crime, etc. Just because a drug is legalised and available from a government shop, doesn't mean people will buy it there. They may (for example) want to prevent an employer getting hold of the fact that they take drugs from the government drugstore by buying the drugs from the illegal street dealer.
Basically, I will not be easily convinced that legalising drugs will make the problem go away until:-
a. Proper, long term studies are done into the health and other effects of long term drug use by large numbers of people,
b. similar studies are done into the sociological effects of vastly increased drug use, and
c. people think about the restrictions on their civil liberties increased drug availability and use will mean.
Since I don't see any of this being done (and doubt it will any time soon), I won't be convinced of the case for legalisation, no matter what old stoners like Martz think
(who seem to want the "cool" or "danger" image of drug taking, but want to be able to buy them cheaper and "cleaner" and with a government guarantee that "this won't fuck you up, honest, and even if it does, we'll give you 100% top of the line healthcare at taxpayer expense until you're better and ready to do it all over again").
PS - another thought which occurred to me. How many people would actually feel comfortable about their government making drugs available to them? That carries far too many ideas of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" book, with the citizens kept pliant, docile and under control by their government who feed them a drug called "soma"...
Have to say, I agree more with Mym, Supermic and Squirrel (and Useless' first few posts) who (imho) have a far more realistic view of what drug legalisation would actually mean, once you take human nature into account. Although Martz will deny it, and even says "It's not like I want to say "Woohoo! Free heroin for everyone" ", that is exactly what his views will mean, taken to their logical conclusion. And that way lies expense, societal problems and tears on a far larger scale than we currently have.