I thnk so. Current efforts are ineffective.

I think every country should seriously consider legalizing marijuana it would save money on all those raids and imprisonment of people just for being pot heads. The harder stuff though should still be illegal.

Yes, but it will never happen. The cartels that make billions on the illegal trade would never let that happen.

I think this is an issue that needs consideration even if there were no cost benefit.

And, the people that use these drugs are not eligible for government benefits because they cannot or will not work neither would they be eligible for government funded treatment programs to break their habits and restore their health. That again would save additional $billions.

Perhaps once some children of politicians are killed by drug-trafficking violence, maybe they'll begin to see that the criminalization only creates more criminals.

haha i ask everyone that question everyday. i think there should be a trial. a period of at least 1 year of where drugs are legal. If the benefits are great and many, drugs should become legal. If it doesn't go so well they should remain legal. But i think it should at least be tried.

Yeah, I think we should consider it. There's no doubt drugs can have a negative influence on a person so that they can no longer function effectively in society ... but prohibition doesn't stop that. Would legalization result in an increase of it happening? I don't think it necessarily would. And I can see many benefits: - it will be easier to get help for addiction when you don't have to admit you're committing a crime - the black market will be deflated and, consequentially, organized crime - less risk to the user that the drug is spiked or cut with something bad - crime-fighting resources will be opened up to fight more important crimes - income for the government - it'll be easier to regulate, as alcohol is regulated (none to children, none while driving, etc.) because it's out in the open

No way. Can you IMAGINE the problems that would create? The number of increased traffic accidents, industrial accidents, increased child abuse and neglect. Can you imagine a society of burnt out stoners messing up left and right? Can you imagine trying to get good service at a store or a restaurant? "Oh, I am sorry that your order is not right". Can you imagine the drop in productivity and the effect that it would have on our economy? I think that the cause for this increasing call for legalization of narcotics is because that so many people are hurting from all of these stressful conditions in the world today. These ones want to "self medicate", get high and try to forget the problems that will still be there when their high is over. I think that what we are seeing today is in fulfillment of what Paul wrote at 2 Timothy 3:1-6 where he describes the last days.

Legalization implies consent. I do not want anyone giving consent to my grandchildren to become dopers.

If you make the assumption that it's similar in all western countries, doesn't it make a similar case for national health care? Every other western nation has it.

I would certainly favor a phased approach starting with marijuana and seeing how it impacts society. Alcohol is approved in most countries and can be horribly debilitating and destructive. But we know in America how terribly Prohibition worked out.

If A (Yours: legalized drugs, Mine: National health care)is beneficial to a western country...

There basically legal already go see a Shrink he/she will medicate the hell outta of you and it's legal.

I would definitely support it. I think that the current situation combines the worst possible outcomes: drugs are freely available, so that anybody who wants them can get them, and yet we also have huge amounts of drug-related crime. The huge profits to be made mean that drugs have the best paid and most motivated (because many of them *need* the money to support their own habits) sales force in the world. I think if we legalised, taxed, put some of the taxes into education and rehabilitation, total use would go down in the long term. No advertising, and every pill, joint or syringe to be traceable to the person who bought it, so no trading (and profitmaking) except at controlled sales points.

The experts already support it in this country. The problem is there is no national support for such changes. The Drug Wars of the 80s turned out to be a failure but it was successful at scaring the public into thinking all drug offenders need to be locked up. Now we have over-crowding in our prisons and drug use hasn't left its normal trends...

Well, what we're doing now CLEARLY isn't working. I'd support something more like decriminalization. I don't know if legalization would be all that great, but criminalizing users has got to end. Putting people in prison for smoking weed is clearly insane. I'd argue imprisoning people who use even the harder drugs isn't very smart. We're taking people with addictive problems and imprisoning them with violent offenders, so they can.. what, learn to be real criminals? Lose their ability to ever hold a decent job? What's the incentive to ever stop using drugs then? Decriminalization as I understand it would keep drugs illegal. Selling and trafficking would still be a felony. But users caught with drugs would be given misdemeanor offenses, fines and mandatory treatment. Then we won't be filling our prisons with literally millions of nonviolent offenders. As for legalization, well.. I think there is some truth to the idea that if something is legal, people will assume it won't kill you. Cigarettes are basically voluntary poison, but if it's available at CVS, how bad can they be? Alcohol is as bad or worse than many drugs, kills just as many innocent people when people get behind the wheel, and yet it is legal and freely available. Our system is totally irrational in this way. I don't know if the use of something like heroin would explode if it were legal, but I think that's a big risk to take considering how awful it is for the user. There should be a gradient here that's somewhat based in reality - if it's more lethal than alcohol, it should probably stay illegal. Marijuana should be completely legal, by any rational measure. I don't even like the stuff, but it seems pretty obvious to me.

Yes. Dopers are gonna dope. We can still enforce drug non usage on the job. But those who are into the gravy train of Drug Interdiction aren't gonna go away easily.

Saving billions and generating revenue makes fiscal sense but wealthy cartels will surely bribe politicians to just say no