You have no concept of how many peoples lives were ruined (including that murder thIng you’re so hung up on) with almost a half a million dollars of cocaine. Use your brain.
But what if... What if that cocaine had been worth only $50? What if it were available at your local pharmacy in 8 ounce bags? What if there was no penalty for possessing it or selling it and the only penalty for using it was the same as for excessive alcohol consumption?
To answer myself: I imagine there would be an increase of death due to overdoses - for awhile. After the “newness” wore off though the numbers would closely match those of drunkeness. While that might not be a goal to strive for the decreased numbers of young people killed in “turf battles” would drop and that would be worth looking forward to. Though not precisely “our” problem the drug wars going on just south of the Mexico border would quickly run out of fuel too.
Of course, the first (and least well-thought-out) arguement for keeping the penalties on drug possession is the old “How would you like it if your child were hooked on drugs?” canard. My answer: Why bother to hook a kid on something there’s no profit in?
Right now the only thing holding up the economy of Columbia, Mexico, and all the cities in the United States that depend on prisons for their livelihood is the illegality of drugs. Which is why they’ll always be illegal. Think of all the people who’d have to find other jobs if drugs were taken off the prohibited list. About a third of our judges would be out of work as would their staffs. The DEA would have to file for unemployment alongside all those narcotics police and the jailers that run the prisons.
No, drugs will always be illegal. Our economy depends on them being hard to get and expensive to acquire.
Nobody forces that cocaine up people’s noses. Locking someone up for 20 years for intending to sell something that people are willing to buy to use on themselves is BS. And the violence associated with the drug trade wouldn’t be an issue if it was legal in the first place...