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The people who would abuse it if it was legal are the ones who are abusing it now, when it's illegal.

Wrong. Millions of people have never tried drugs or become regular users simply because there is a societal/legal sanction against it. Take that away, add in the fact that it will then be legal to advertise and make drugs easily available to everyone, and you've got a scenario for a societal breakdown like what existed in Opium War-era China.

Wrong. Millions of people have never tried drugs or become regular users simply because there is a societal/legal sanction against it.

The people who are prone to abusing legal substances that can affect your judgement and/or mood can already easily do so. And many do - they kill over 10,000 of their fellow Americans every year and injure God only knows how many more. That's more dead Americans in one year than we've lost in both Iraq and Afghanistan in total over the last 8-11 years.

Society sanctions? I got a pretty good chuckle out of that. Some of our top movies, TV shows, and the celebrities who star in them openly celebrate illegal substances. Look at how many celebrities in our society get in trouble for abusing drugs, both legal and illegal, and they suffer no real harm. Sure they go through "drug rehab" and they avoid prison unlike the peasants like you and me, but their images aren't destroyed, they don't lose their audiences.

And if they die due to their drug abuse, does society harshly criticize them? No, they hoist them on our shoulders, put them on a pedestal, pretend that they were just incredible human beings who were "misunderstood" and "troubled".

Legal sanctions? Oh please, there are already legal sanctions against abusing legally-obtained substances that can alter and impair your judgement and mood, and that doesn't stop Americans from abusing them.

There are some really bad drugs, I will not disagree with that, but the drug war, which we've been fighting for four decades, is a failure. Well, if you like the idea of the government having more and more power as the years go by and destroying our Constitution in the process, and if you like the idea of your local police department equipping themselves as if they are going to patrol the streets of Baghdad, then I guess it's a huge success.

And the drug war and the legal powers the government has been amassing in its name are going to destroy this country long before the drugs themselves do.

I would rather see more drugs legalized and the drug war scaled back than to continue seeing our Constitution shredded in the name of "protecting" people from themselves.

Millions of people have never tried drugs or become regular users simply because there is a societal/legal sanction against it. Take that away, add in the fact that it will then be legal to advertise and make drugs easily available to everyone, and you've got a scenario for a societal breakdown like what existed in Opium War-era China.

I would like to ask - how much do you think the government should be involved in protecting people from themselves?