From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!houxi!houxj!wapd Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Legalization of Drugs Article-I.D.: houxj.109 Posted: Thu Jun 24 13:06:55 1982 Received: Mon Jun 28 01:00:48 1982 I agree with GREG of hao that drugs that are presently illegal should be legalized. My rationale for this is given below, and it is based more on practical grounds rather than any good moral argument. Several harmful things are happening today. We have addicts committing crimes to get drugs. We have organized crime making enormous profits from the sale of drugs. We spend lots of money to patrol our borders, and good portion of that is directed at drug-smugglers. One way to reduce or eliminate these problems is to attack the root of the problem. That is, we could eradicate drug use by convincing or forcing people to stop taking drugs. We could convince or force people to stop growing or making drugs. However, the government has tried to do these things and has failed. Another approach is to legalize the drugs. This would eliminate the profits to organized crime and eliminate the drug-smuggling (both depend on assumption that private enterprise is more efficient than organized crime). We would still be left with addicts committing crimes, and hurting innocent people in the process. I am not particularly happy with this solution, but it is probably better than today's state of affairs. Bill Dietrich houxj!wapd