As muchas I agree with Mr.Santana that pot should be legalized, that's about the worst argument I ever heard for it. We could
afford a better governor!?!?!? Yeah, tell me about it, the price of governors has just been killing me lately
And don't even get me started on how throwing money at the education system isn't going to make it any better.
August has already pointed out one of the best arguments for legalizing marijuana; the massive burden it places on the legal system.
Call me crazy, but it seems like a waste to spend tens of billions of dollars every year to incarcerate victimless criminals and pay the DEA to not keep marijuana out of the country.
In fact, I extend such arguments to include
all drugs, not just mj. And the harms of prohibiting drug trade extend far beyond the legal burden. Hundreds of billions of dollars every year are lost in the form of trade and taxation that could benefit from drugs. Drug cartels wage secret wars against each other with many casualties to control the illegal trade. People steal and assault others to get money for the expensive drugs they crave, because forcing this black market underground forces prices up.
Public servants die enforcing this ridiculous policy.
Imo, the private sector provides the most effective form of drug regulation anyways. Most employers require drug screenings, and one's career is a pretty strong incentive to stay away from drugs. That's regulation without infringement upon personal freedoms and it doesn't cost billions of taxpayer dollars. For those who continue to choose to use drugs, a few simple laws against use of drugs in inapproporiate venues and perhaps some licensing requirements for retailers should ensure that only the chronic(no pun intended) abusers are penalized or jailed.
Of course, there will be people who slip through the cracks and destroy their lives. Is it tragic? Yes. Should we care? Yes. Should we force everyone to care and simultaneously waste billions of dollars? No.
I seriously doubt that the strung-out losers who ruin their lives with drugs are worth the fortune that has been spent on ineffectively trying to prevent them from making destructive choices. Why not get some use out of them before they poison themselves to death? You can't stop them from doing it, and as statistics on school drug use show, you can't stop them from being exposed to and trying drugs. Prohibition is both impossible and extremely expensive.
The only rational argument I can see for prohibition of drugs is the fact that it incurs taxpayer costs in healthcare, as AVG says. Of course, the state has no damn business paying for healthcare in the first place, especially in the U.S., where it has no constitutional authority to do so.
And even without drug-related costs, medicare and medicaid alone make up about half of all federal expenditure.
In my younger years I tried to argue the case for drug prohibition in NFL(National Forensic League) debates and also in Student Congress. The case is almost impossible to make. The harms of drug prohibition are far too many and far too well-documented to make an effective case.