By your own admission, you just said your friend was lured into criminal activity because his need to supply his drug habit. If we made drugs legal, he still would have needed money for his habit. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's free.
Switzerland and The Netherlands have decriminalized heroin, which is now available to addicts at government supervised clinics along with needles and syringes. I don't recall the specifics regarding cost but I know that the actual cost/value of an average dose of heroin in U.S. dollars is about fifteen cents! Syringes cost a quarter and needles are a dime.
But the main advantage is the heroin supplied by the clinic is sterile and accurately measured. One main advantage of such availability is the elimination of the myriad medical problems related to using bootleg heroin which invariably is cut with all sorts of unsanitary, sometimes toxic substances (thus the term, "junk").
Both the Netherlands and Swiss heroin programs have been very successful in that the heroin-related crime rate has been virtually eliminated and there has been no increase in user rate, mainly because an effective rehab and discouragement program accompanies availability at the distribution centers.
If recreational narcotics were made legal, we would only have more drug addicts.
Portugal legalized all drugs about two years ago. The result thus far says you're mistaken.
More people on our social programs, more people victims of crimes, more people dying like my cousin's son did this past summer from an OD of heroin.
If clean, measured heroin doses were available at an approved distribution center he would not have overdosed. The quality of street heroin is a major cause of heroin-related problems.
The war on drugs is only there to help contain the problem--not solve it. Going the other way would only make things worse.
The drug war is a fiasco. It solves or contains nothing. Drugs are more available today than they were when Reagan escalated Nixon's folly -- and they cost less. Anyone who wants to buy drugs can find a supplier. And if Supplier A is busted, Supplier B steps right up. If Supplier B is busted, Supplier C steps up. And that goes right down the line from C to Z.
Everyone who is the least bit knowledgeable understands this. The notion that the drug war "contains" the problem rather than contributing to it is promoted by cops and narcs -- who know it's bullshit and who happen to be the scumbags of law enforcement.[/QUOTE]
