[ndigila]

Originally Posted by ATLian

Also, in the prohibition era, booze was as illegal as drugs now are. Thousands were killed in the illegal booze trade, thousands died from drinking booze brewed by shady characters in unsanitary conditions, thousands were jailed, cops spent thousands of hours chasing booze runners instead of legit criminals, etc. Now booze is legal, it's brewed in good sanitary conditions, etc. Think about if the same thing would happen to the drug trade. I've heard that half the US jail population is there for drug related charges. The billions spent on the "drug war" is ridiculous. Just legalize the trade, which would immediately cut the insane profits off, and the drug industry would become like the booze industry.

Is it worth spending the billions of dollars on drug war?

Let's say drug trade was legalized. A jamaa can walk into any convenient store, show ID and walk out with some heroine. Eventually, this jamaa gets addicted to heroine. Heroine begins to take a toll on his body and then his productivity at jobo reduces. He eventually gets fired. Now with no source of income, he relies on his buddies to satisfy his dangerous addiction. Eventually his buddies will kataa. (Now if his buddies are also heroine addicts, that even compounds the problem). What happens next? The probable option is to resort to criminal activity. He'll either try to break into the convenient stores to steal heroine ama steal money to buy heroine. He eventually ends up in jail.

Now multiply this scenario on a national scale. More people will become less productive at jobo, and the economy begins to suffer. Thousands of people resort to crime in order to satisfy their addiction. So you still end up with lots of people in jail and on top of that a worse economy.

So legalizing drug trade isn't that simple.