Well, it is settled, then. I’m moving to Amsterdam.
Album title!
Seriously, though: my entire family of origin has issues with drug/alcohol addiction and I’ve been clean for several years now. The legal status of any drug had nothing to do with me using or not using it. The legal status of drugs had very little to do with me getting clean or with me staying clean today. All my friends, both inside and outside of 12-step programs say the same thing. I don’t know anybody who decided not to try drugs because they’re illegal. I don’t know anybody who got off drugs because they’re illegal. (Of course, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen).
We gave up on the prohibition of alcohol in the '30s because it didn’t work. I would expect today’s drug cartels to expand into other illegal businesses should the US legalize drugs.
The thing that I can’t imagine is the US government giving up on the war on drugs because:
1. It would mean admitting they were actually *wrong* for the better part of a century and wasted **billions** of dollars.
2. The religious right still has a lot of influence on American politics.**
This argument makes too many assumptions to be valid. For one thing it argues that one reason to keep drugs illegal is to provide jobs for street thugs! But if you really are worried that former drug dealers will turn to violent crime, then the solution would be a massive job training program for the inner city. And how would we pay for this? From the massive tax revenue generated from the sale of legalized drugs!
I think the legalization of marijuana alone would go a long way to actually help the war on drugs since it could potentially sever the pipeline of dealers.
Most of the harder drugs I had available could only have come to me if I knew people who sold dope. I don’t buy the gateway drug theory—I’ve wanted to do “hard” drugs long before I had the opportunity to do any—but dealers themselves can be a gateway in other senses. Though the change won’t be immediate I would expect that most people wouldn’t have the connections they do now if we were to make the most common connection—pot—be a legal one with the local drugstore and kwik-e-mart.
The problem remains, however, with underage use (as I assume that any legalization would stop at the minor/adult distinction). Though it is probably that most would just find either blind-eye sellers or overage friends (hey, everyone doesn’t turn 18—or for that matter 21—at once) the possibility remains that there could still be a fraction of dealers that would keep the pipeline open.
I don’t see a way around that, because the next popular drugs are cocaine and heroin, and maybe LSD or ecstacy, and those wouldn’t be legalized here in my friggin’ lifetime. So some pipelines will always be open, but still I think that the biggest ones will be closed down, going a long way toward eliminating other drug use.