I don't think I or anyone else said that in this thread. I wouldn't advocate for subsidizing tobacco or alcohol to the end consumers either but I know we do subsidize both to the which I don't think is appropriate either. What I said is that the laws against cocaine or heroin cause more harm to society than the drugs themselves. If we are basing the illegality of a consumer product based on the harm that it causes then alcohol and tobacco should have been illegal decades ago. Give me a little bit to think about what stuff and I'll Outlaw half the stuff in the grocery store based on how bad it is for a person's health.

So if legalizing it cures that. Your words. Why is a legal bag of weed more expensive than an illegal bag of weed?

Again reality doesn’t care about your opinion. It’s failed everywhere.

The world you’re trying to paint doesn’t exist.

Isn’t legalization just to reduce the criminal element and regulate? Referring to prohibition and what occurred during that time.

Laws, mores, customs and other things which have come in to play over generations have developed for the smooth running of said society. How could we have been so wrong on this one? I am not sure the total decriminalization of drugs is the poison we should be choosing. Pick wisely.

In a free society people should be allowed to do whatever it is they want to do within boundaries.

He just said we need to lower the cost so Addicts don’t have to steal your stuff for a high. He said it’s expensive because it’s illegal.

Heroin made legally will be cheaper and wonderful soccer moms can pick it up at cvs and rainbows and unicorns and what not.

The rocket surgeons in Oregon decided to get away from enforcing drug laws and concentrate on rehab. Rehab numbers have not increased but drug use deaths certainly have.

The people that are using those drugs there and who are dying from those drugs certainly had a drug problem long before the state decriminalized them. I'm also quite happy to see fools who choose to do unhealthy things killing themselves with those unhealthy things , doesn't bother me in the slightest. The one thing the state didn't do was rein in the cost of those drugs so you are still required to engage in criminal activity to be able to afford those drugs and that's the real problem with drugs.

Edit: I feel compelled to point out one more time that despite the majority of illicit drugs being illegal since 1934 there has never been a problem with availability of illegal drugs and their availability is ubiquitous across the entire United States despite there being a declared internal war that was declared by Nixon on June 19th 1971 against drugs. The War on Drugs has had Zero Effect on consumer demand for drugs. In all likelihood the prohibitions against drugs has been the driving force in the market place. The United States has been engaged in the war on drugs for 52 years and it's explicitly clear that drugs won.

"you are still required to engage in criminal activity to be able to afford those drugs and that's the real problem with drugs."

^^^^ I don't know why that's so hard for people to understand. When we discuss a drug problem we're talking about two distinct issues. The first is the health issue. The second is the legality issue. Drugs are drivers of crime because people are hooked on them and their price is inflated because of prohibition and to be able to afford their habit they have to engage in illegal activities unless they are an incredibly high wealth individual. There are also many many more recreational users of some drugs that are not addicts and who do not have to engage in criminal activity. The only goal accomplished by the War on Drugs is making a lot of bad people very rich. That's it. Everyone in the United States who wants drugs can get drugs.

My favorite argument from the dopers...."Yeah coke/weed/heroin/crack/lsd is bad for you, but tobacco/alcohol is also bad."

That's a clown argument.

The drugs called alcohol and tobacco kill four times more people every year than all of the illegal drugs combined. It took a constitutional amendment to outlaw alcohol. Where is the Constitutional Amendment that outlawed all of the common street drugs? I'm not advocating for drug use because I don't believe it's healthy. What I'm advocating for is freedom from government intrusion into every aspect of our lives and not just some aspects of our lives. I know that freedom is scary to a lot of people but you need to be allowed to make up your own mind even if you make the wrong decisions.

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As long as I'm free to not pay for the care and feeding of the brain damaged druggies I'm good with that. But we know that's not how any of this works.

"Wrong decisions" of druggies often lead to deaths of innocent people.

What does how many people it kills have to do with anything?

Degradation of society is not measured in deaths only. I've never seen anyone rob a convenience store and steal Skoal. I've never seen someone kill a family of 4 because they were driving while dipping. I've never heard of anyone breaking into a home because they needed money for beer. Making laws to protect members of society is not entirely the role of the Constitution.

When one person's "wrong decision" has an effect on others, that is not a freedom you deserve to have.

Are there stats available that show tobacco deaths by age versus drug deaths by age?

I had a family member killed by a drunk driver so it's safe to say alcohol does the exact same thing but it can be purchased in every US state and US territory.

We are paying for those people now. Are you operating under the illusion that prison systems are operated with no tax dollars? How about the tens of billions of dollars spent every year to pay for the War on Drugs?

Pretty funny to watch the "holier than thou" preach about how bad drugs are only to later post in a bourbon thread

I’ve known people that try and toe that libertarian line of freedom to buy whatever drug you want. They generally grow out of it with age and wisdom

You don't hear of anyone stealing to afford tobacco or alcohol because the cost of tobacco and alcohol is not inflated by many orders of magnitude because of prohibition type laws. When we had prohibition that made alcohol illegal it was the pivotal and foundational moment that created organized crime in the United States. Prior to that organized crime consisted of regional gangs instead of nationwide affiliated organizations. I know of a Church Bus full of children who were all killed by a driver of an 18-wheeler just outside of Tyler Texas when he dropped his cigarette and was reaching for it. An attorney in Dallas named Frank Branson made history in the settlement of that case in the late 80s. There was also an incident with a Dr Pepper truck that smashed into a school bus and the cause of that accident was the driver accidentally dumping his spit cup in his lap. I think Dr Pepper forked out a couple of hundred million dollars in damages on that one and that was less than 20 years ago.

Edit: I also have personally had an apartment broken into by people searching for alcohol. This was in Lewisville Texas in the early '90s and some teenagers were going to the complex and knocking on doors. If no one answered they broke in from the patio door and raided the refrigerator for Booze. Does seven counts of burglary of a habitation by a bunch of teenagers count as a serious crime in your book? The district attorney in Denton sure thought so. I also sat on a jury in Hood County in 1995 for a man charged with aggravated robbery when him and his buddies hit a beer store, grabbed a couple of cases of beer, and the guy on trial held a box cutter to the throat of the store clerk. We gave him 20 years.

Dude your argument that legal drugs would be cheaper is bs. you never answered my question why legal pot is more expensive than illegal pot stop dancing around the truth. It is right in front of your face stop closing your eyes. Your argument doesn’t work drugs are bad and they ruin peoples minds. Society will not work with legalize drugs. It is that simple.

Driving while drunk is illegal. Sorry to hear about your family member.

Legal weed is expensive if you buy it in a boutique store the same way Tiffany Jewelry cost four times more than the exact same stuff from a regular Jeweler. Just by keeping my ears open I know that a pound of Premium hydroponic Oklahoma grown marijuana can be had for $1,200 but when they sell it by the quarter ounce that same pound comes out to about 10 times that amount. Once marijuana is legal in the ubiquitous fashion that tobacco is it will cost only slightly more than tobacco does. Right now it's operating in a gray area because even legal weed is still illegal at a federal level.

Edit: to quote the founding Father of the legal weed movement in California I will say this. The biggest mistake you can make is believing that what you're doing is legal. If weed was legal the feds would not have just seized 48 million in cash from a man who had paid income taxes on that money and he was engaged in the business of selling hydroponic gardening supplies to marijuana growers throughout the United States. Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong Fame did time in federal prison for selling glassware through the mail and that glassware was bongs to smoke weed. Maybe you've heard of Tommy Chong bongs before. Well the man did several years in the federal clink because of them.