The Fallacy of Illegal Drugs

Let me open by stating that by no means am I suggesting that drugs are moral but I believe our current policy is immoral. As a nation, we are breaking up families, we are putting people in prisons, we have violence in the streets all in the name of the war on drugs. This is a war and we have spent more money on the drug war than we have on the Iraq war; however, at some point we will walk away from the Iraq war, when do we walk away from the War on Drugs?

I have the answer to that, we won't. Drugs have been around since before Christ and they will be around until Christ returns. Think about the money that is being spent on prisons, police departments, military, border patrol, rehabs, foreign aid, technology for fighting drugs; the problem, drug use remains high, violence remains high and our prisons are overcrowded.

Do you know who wants drugs to remain illegal, drug dealers, weapons companies and private prison companies. That is who.

We haven't made a dent in the curbing drug use. The problem with our current policy is it tries to disrupt a market and like any market you can get rid of a dealer but another dealer will step in, you can seize goods but the price will rise but the desire will remain. It's a flawed policy.

The problem we have as a nation, until we realize this and have a paradigm shift in how we view the problem we will continue to fight violence with violence, break-up families by sending users or dealers to prison, spending ungodly amount of money and providing a market for violent people to make a living.

If we legalize drugs and I mean all drugs, the street dealer goes away, the need for drug raids goes away and we can keep the violent people in prison. We can direct money to education and other programs to curb drug use. See, the fallacy in resisting legalizing drugs is the thought that you are condoning the use of drugs. We can still look down on it, like we do with smoking cigarettes. People are really looking down on smoking, yet it remains a legal thing to do, people's acceptance of it has diminished.

Though drugs would be legal, that doesn't mean we would allow someone to show up to work high on coke or heroin. Private business could still test and fire people for having drugs in their system. It's a fallacy in thinking to believe that just because drugs are legal, society would be saying that they are acceptable.

Remember, our current policies are hypocritical. Cigarettes, alcohol, spray paint, muscle relaxants, diet pills, coffee, solvents and prescription and non-prescription medicines are all abused by people to get high or alter mood and they are all legal. People abuse them just like they do the illegal stuff, and in some cases, they are just as addicting.

If drugs were legal, the wars at our borders would diminish. Mexico has become a territorial bloodbath between cartels for the right to feed the market. Imagine if drugs were legal and we regulated the entrance into the U.S., just like we do with coffee, it would basically be a business between farmers and distributors. All in the open. Who kills and tortures over the right to deliver tomatoes to the U.S.? The Taliban and Al Queda finance activities with Opium. Anyone financing their terrorist activities with oranges?

I'm not suggesting that through legalization all of our problems will go away but I believe we will have control of them.