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Originally written by An Upright stranger:

I just don't trust that people buying drugs will use moderation. Therefore the problems they create would cancel out benefits of controlling the sale of drugs. And hey, wouldn't this plan only work if the government did it perfectly? Since when has anyone done something perfectly?

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Originally posted (in the other thread) by Student of Trinity:
My point wasn't that buying drugs is like murder, except in being illegal but inevitable. It was just to criticise one particular argument, namely, the seemingly pragmatic appeal to bring something inevitable under control by legally accepting its inevitability. As far as I can see at the moment, this argument was one of the strongest ones for legalizing drugs, and it is now gone without a trace.

I regret this. I liked that argument, and I'd be happy to see it rebut my criticism and come back somehow. I just don't see how it will, at the moment, myself.

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Originally posted by Alec:
I believe in full legalization of all currently controlled substances.

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Originally written by Student of Trinity:

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At first I like the sound of the argument that people are going to buy drugs anyway, so we should recognize the fact, and let the government exert some control over the process to minimize bad side effects, and extract some tax money from it as well, instead of letting criminals get all the profit. Sounds persuasive.

But we could make an exactly analogous proposal about contract killings:

People are going to pay hit men to rub out their enemies, and all the money will go to organized crime, and there are risks to innocent bystanders. So instead, we should legalize murder for hire. If you really want someone dead, you should be able to hire the Marines to send in a trained sniper team. Yada yada yada -- pretty much all the good things you could say about legalizing drugs seem to me to have analogues in this proposal.

Now it sounds to me as though there must be a problem with this form of argument.

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Interesting point. But drug use is inherently self-destructive; hiring a hitman is obviously intended first and foremost to destroy someone else.

And as for using the drugs to intentionally harm innocents, the same can be done with a tack hammer, and God knows we haven't done anything about that. In the case of unintentional harms, I'd be for the same kind of regulations against public use we have against, say, cigarettes, where they are applicable.

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Originally written by Student of Trinity:

I was just criticizing one particular argument, namely the pragmatic appeal to bring something inevitable under control at the apparently small price of legally accepting its inevitability. Essentially my point was that this particular argument is moot: the merits of the legalization need to be established on other grounds.

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