Thanks for asking and hopefully I shall be able to make some sense of my thoughts for you. For the greater part there is no such thing as a "victimless crime". If meth, for example, were made legal would its effects on users be any less destructive? If zoophilia or pedophilia were made legal, would they be any less disgusting? Families are destroyed by drug use and it is a certainty that they would continue to be even if such drugs were made legal.
An example of a legal drug would be alcohol. The use of this legal drug has destroyed countless lives both the users and those that know and/or love them. There are taxes made on alcohol, are there not? There are no "cartels" but there are still problems directly related to alcohol. Problems that society must pay for. Drunk driving takes many lives does it not? It is illegal to drive drunk and yet people still do it so why not make it legal to drive drunk? Or at the very least should it be legal to drive drunk so long as when you have an accident you harm no one but yourself? That sounds fair, does it not? This would free up the courts for more important matters like the crimes of theft or murder. A meth or heroin addict dies from an overdose leaving behind their family. In the strictest sense they have harmed only themselves. Their family is still alive. No harm no foul. The life of a whore is a sad one and this is well documented from countless studies, but since they harm no one but themselves and provide such "pleasure" to others, how can it be wrong to hook ones body for money? If they are an addict, so much the better as that too is legal. In legalizing drugs, prostitution and the like you really don't eliminate the negatives.
Its like white washing a tomb. It may look nice and clean on the outside but on the inside its still full of death.
But why stop there? Since alcohol is legal why not just take the shining example of it and make all drugs and crimes legal or at least the ones that the public finds within themselves and wishes to now tolerate until such time as they are directly impacted by the results of such use (e.g., they are robbed, hit by a drunk driver or somehow harmed by a meth "enthusiast").
You cannot serve two masters and in this instance they are reason and insanity. You cannot call that which is bad good. No wait! You can call bad good but it will still be what it has always been: Bad.
Why not make it legal to take what you want from another so long as you are the stronger? Only the strong survive, right? If my words fall upon deaf ears it is only because some would pull their fingers out of the pie of filthy complicity and plunge them into their ears.
Ok... I don't think strong armed robbery is a good comparison... You're TAKING from someone by force.
Alcohol IS a drug... you're right... AND it's legal.
Other drugs will cause no more harm than alcohol and in most cases LESS harm than the laws used to "enforce" it's crime.... Money to cartels and the wars on the borders for instance.
The numbers on Alcholo related car crashes are TOTALLY inflated and that's common knowledge... So using that as a basis doesn't really bring much to the table unless you're a proponent of MADD.
Would meth heads be dead if meth were illegal? Sure... but guess what... More people die from legal prescription drugs and no one says a thing.
The fact is, people who choose to use drugs do not care what the legality is... They just use them.
None of this factors in the cost of tax dollars being wasted to enforce these laws and incarcerate people for violating these drug laws which have no direct impact on society as a whole.
If your fried dies or ruins his life, that sucks, but my life doesn't change... If your friend gets incarcerated, then my tax dollar has to pay for him.
I see a difference in social impact and interpersonal impact.
Fact is, drug laws don't stop anything and only cost more money.
I'm much like Chaos... I rarely drink and I don't use any other drug except for the occasional excedrine for a headache. So drug laws in general don't affect me, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to the hypocrisy, nor the expense that comes out of my pocket to incarcerate people who will do me no harm.
