As I said before, there is a lot of good in the Libertarian platform, but there is too much I don't agree with to make me an actual Libertarian. I never saw ads for "legal weed," though. I know you don't, but that is due to the garbage you have been fed about drugs. It truly isn't your fault and all I would ask is that you keep an open mind and study this issue. Once you have been exposed to actual facts for any length of time, it will become impossible for you to defend prohibition as a policy. I have studied this issue in one way or another for coming up on two decades. I was a drug counselor and have helped hundreds of people recover from addiction. In every single one of those cases, bar none, prohibition has made the problems worse. No, my argument has far less to do with alcohol prohibition than it does with economic realities. We have spent astronomical sums of money and have committed a hundred billion dollars a year to a policy that has had no positive impact on our society. Since Nixon coined the term "War on Drugs," drugs have gotten cheaper, purer, and more available to our nation's youth. This is a policy that is not even beginning to accomplish its stated goals and yet we mindlessly allow our politicians to waste our tax dollars on an effort that has only made the problem worse. This happens to be the same thing that happened with alcohol prohibition, but that is just a handy comparison, not the crux of my argument. None, because prohibition never took alcohol off of the street. It made alcohol more expensive, more dangerous, and more lucrative to criminals, but it never took a drop of liquor away from people who wanted to drink. Same thing with drugs. We could save FAR more lives AND develop ACTUAL statistics for how many people die from them rather than just estimates and WAGs. No, but since we started the "We Card" programs and got more serious about stopping underage drinking (mostly since MADD was formed), we have had a MAJOR impact on underage drinking. IMO, we would have to control alcohol sales more closely than we do now to further reduce underage drinking, but the regulated market has shown the ability to have an impact on rates of underage use, whereas prohibition has placed drugs directly in our children's hands to the point that they report that they can get illegal drugs more easily than alcohol. And society in general since organized crime doesn't control another of the most profitable and popular products out there. Again, society since gangland violence doesn't mark the alcohol trade. People who drink as they don't have to be worried about the dangers of "bathtub gin" and the like. Besides, you are making the assumption that every single person who drinks will drink enough to do significant liver damage. A relatively small percentage of people gets into problem drinking just as a very small percentage of people get into problem drug use. The vast majority of drug users are just as responsible as the vast majority of drinkers. So far, there is not a single documented case of anyone dying from pot alone over the course of human history. There is already a breathalyzer for pot, so DUI laws would apply, and in the system I would create, if someone developed problem use, they would have treatment available on demand. So far, there is not definitive proof that pot causes any of these, and the problems would be further minimized when vaporizers become the delivery mechanism of choice (which can't really happen without further research). So one of the side benefits of regulation is that we would be able to study and find out what problems pot ACTUALLY causes so that we can give that information to the people in the form of education classes that would be mandatory to become a licensed buyer. I am glad that the "Just Say No" approach works for you, but the point is that it is not working for society. I would also caution you that this approach is particularly ineffective with kids and would caution you to become more educated about drugs before you start having those conversations with your children. You can get your kids to avoid drugs, but if you use the government propaganda approach, your children are more likely to use drugs than if you just tell them the honest truth. Heroin is just a form of morphine, so it is one of the best pain killers around. It was developed partly to give to soldiers so that they wouldn't overdose on morphine. ...and alcohol, and virtually every drug out there. Pot is by far the least dangerous of any of the psychoactives. Again, this is one reason we need to do more study so that we can further minimize the health impact. Our drug policy can have a positive impact on society, but that will not happen until the market is regulated.
