Drugs

"The prison population would markedly decrease granted but you will gain that back with an influx of psychological disorders and an overflow in
mental institutions. Drugs used for medical conditions that are severe or terminal should be the only reason they are legally administered and in a restricted way."

As a priority of a nation vested with protecting the rights of the people, rights that we may or may not consider practicing, we should abolish these unjust. laws. Prioritize offenses and sentence the offenders accordingly. There is no reason we should have millions sent to jail and or prison every year because their actvity which does not harm their neighbor offends some of us.

Secondly, my response to your argument that there would be a precipitous increase in the usage is this: That if you are liable to abuse a drug prior to decriminalization, then you are liable as well after; but, if you were not predisposed to using such a drug prior then you would be no more disposed to using it after. I think the record in areas such as Portugal where this experiment has been tried has shown that there is no gainful increase in drug abuse after drug laws are repealed.

Thirdly, to the point about mental health, I would say that mental health needs to be reformed as well. There needs to be strict penalties for doctors who abuse their doctor-client relationship. Those who continue providing risky medical treatment at the expense of patient's welfare and the laws for institutionalization need to be looked at. Though we are better off than in the 1970s when lobotomies and commitment were the norm, we still practice electric-convulsive therapy, a barbaric procedure, and the laws for commitment place too much faith in the psychiatric industry and often neglect the right of the accused to be given a fair hearing before a jury of his peers.

In short, if the Constitution meant anything anymore, then there wouldn't be questions like this.

Finally, the prohibitions have been kept in place because the government, who brings these drugs into this country, are beneficiaries of its sale, receiving billions, or trillions in revenue annually from its sale, going to fund a massive Pentagon black budget over and beyond current defense spending.

What if government intervention was the cause of skyrocketing use to begin with? And why do we have as strict penalties as we do for something that you would acknowledge sometimes harms the individual but no one else, almost making this a higher priority than violent offenses? There all bad, but I'm saying for the limited number of beds in jails, we are better off punishing those who mean great harm to society than someone who simply lives in a way most sensible people reject.

Satan created weed you say? He brought it into the world? Satan has no creative power. He would only take something God had created for the good of mankind such as the cannabis and spin it to something he can use as a means of control. You're making a moral equivalency between someone who smokes joints with those who kill their unborn children or practice an abomination that was punished with execution in the Bible. There is no equivalency here and I suspect somewhere in your medicine cabinet is something that has potential for abuse/mind-altering effects like most people, especialy those who are so adamant (and old) who are the most vocal against it. It has a legitimate medical use and is more effective than man-made drugs. Only a tyrannical government would try to involve itself in the private lives of its citizens anyhow.

Ruth ...... if you want to experience life without interference from the government in the drug trade

Move to Columbia

It will scare the crap out of even the toughest person.

Best wishes.

If that were true Arnie, then why is Portugal such the unColombia? The truth is Colombia is a narcocratic state. The contrast with America is that we're run by a drug trafficking government that is worried about organizations in Mexico who are their competitors, while balancing the prohibitions in place with a fierce anti-drug policy against users and dealers. In Colombia there is none of this, the state is narcocratic. What the libertarians say would be good for America is to have government pull back from its intense prosecutorial policy, restore liberty to the people and continue in efforts to curb drug abuse, the thinking that with a degree of liberalization, including the sale of weed and other drugs in local drug stores that this would curb the extent of the black market, running them out of business in most cases.

That is not what Colombia has done.