Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 04/13/04 8:05 am:
Excon,
You say “millions of lives ruined. One of them could be your daughter.” I suppose that is always a possibility ,although she appears to be at this time very anti-substance abuse . She is President of the local ‘Students Against Drunk Driving ‘ . But ,she does have the addicition genes in her family history ,so it is conceivable she would one day stray. Yes ,every one is at risk ;however ,I do not see how making illegal drugs legal would reduce such a risk . Currently ,the high price ,and the criminality of substance abuse acts as additional deterrence to those who would consider trying drugs . I know it doesn’t stop all ,but surely there are many who do not stray due to the fear of the punishment .

The only evidence I have to back this is debatable ,but logical to me . Before prohibition ,a substantial number of people in the U.S. drank booze. Historians believe that in the beginning of the era, and at least until the middle of the 1920s, most Americans respected the prohibition laws, hoped that it would endure, and regarded its passage as directly responsible for the reduced incidence of public drunkenness and of alcohol-related crime, imprisonments, and hospitalizations. Statistics show that Prohibition reduced the annual per capita consumption from 2.6 gallons of absolute alcohol to 0.97 gallons .Moreover, there was no real evidence of a crime wave during the 1920s exists, although the crime rate did in fact rise. The average death rate from cirrhosis of the liver was 7.3 per 100,000 in the years 1920-1933; the average rate for the rest of the 20th century was 11.5. Admissions to state mental hospitals for alcohol psychosis also fell from 10.1 per 100,000 in 1919 to 4.7 per 100,000 in 1928.

In the late 1920s, however, more and more Americans found the idea of repeal increasingly attractive. The reasons for this were numerous, the government’s failure to enforce the law being only one of them. Most Americans were happy that the old time saloon had been abolished, but they felt that a new society was emerging in the 1920s an urban and industrial society of great geographic and social mobility and great ethnic and religious diversities, in which the protection of the family from alcohol was perhaps less socially urgent than the expansion and protection of individual freedom. A major shift in public opinion occurred during the Great Depression, when opponents could argue that Prohibition deprived people of jobs and the governments of tax revenue. The annual per capita consumption of absolute alcohol in the country rose after the repeal, but most states still retain restrictions on the sale and consumption of alcohol.

If raising the cost of something doesn't decrease its sales( basic economics) , and if being socially unacceptable doesn't make a thing less popular then everything I understand about human nature is false. I understand that it is logical to say ;”Get rid of the law ,and you reduce the crime” ,and you eliminate the need to enforce it . But ,I believe the social costs of abandoning the drug wars would be a disaster . If the only argument against it is hypocrisy ,then I guess I stand accused .