Once any government decides on prohibition, then they make a market black, i.e. with people willing to kill or go to jail because it is so profitable. Where's that black market profitability with underage alcohol drinking?
Let me elaborate. Just what's a kid? What's the age of majority that you have all the rights of an adult? This is tricky. Modern studies of brain imaging indicate that "Teen Brain Still Developing and Maturing to Mid 20s."
It's tricky because it's fairly arbitrary. What age do you pick for determining the cut-off ages for be able to legally marry, smoke or use tobacco, drink alcohol, vote, or becoming an infantryman? There's a reason for the root of the word infantry. It gets me when I hear stories about child soldiers that are obviously at least old teenagers.
What about statutory rape, or being tried as an adult? Those are just some of the problems with the "It's for the children," argument i.e. when should they be considered adults. I have trouble denying eighteen year old infantrymen any rights. I wish they couldn't vote until they were at least twenty five, but that's another story.
If it is found in nature, I would let them sell it like alcohol and tobacco, possibly with the exception of hallucinogens. If it is chemically processed and refined, then it would come under the juridiction of the DEA, FDA or both. Making opium and coca leaves illegal created the incentive to concentrate the active ingredients into heroin and cocaine.
That also created the incentive to inject drugss intravenously with all the attendant spread of viral and bacterial disease. The latter makes me believe in needle exchange programs, not just for the immediate costs to society of the intravenous drug abuser, but to the innocent victims that they infect with various forms of hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, etc. It's quite a list.
Taxing it like alcohol and tobacco will only become problematic when the taxes are so great that the government creates the temptation to just steal it and sell it relatively cheaply.
Only the left believes you can change human nature. Those who believe harsh penalties deter it can look at how chock full the prisons are. The war on some drugs is just a war on human nature, IMHO.
Thank you for expressing your alternate opinion. I read it and appreciate it.
Great post bump!
Just an FYI: “Heroin” started out life as a trademark of the Bayer Company for a narcotic preparation. It was touted originally as a “wonder drug” AND available over the counter.
Cocaine was and IS CURRENTLY used in medicine... Ophthalmologists use it as a local anesthetic in eye surgery, for example. And it was, at one time, an ingredient in ... wait for it ... COCA Cola. (The leaf of the COCA plant.)
Neither drug came into its present form AFTER Prohibition II was begun. And there have been no new FORMS of opiates on the underground market that I have ever heard of, but sometimes heroin is marketed in SMOKABLE form. And, of course CRACK Cocaine is Cocaine in a smokable form. That IS a development of the war on some drugs... more high for less money... and more dangerous and addictive, so I hear.