I agree with the commenter above about industries like the prison industrial complex impeding drug law reform. I'd like to add that much of law enforcement probably feels threatened by legalization as well. From what I understand local police receive federal funds for continuing the war on drugs. Some are also addicted to the additional income they receive from forfeiture law, which would be a terrible idea for a law even if it were implemented without such clear conflicts of interest.

Modus I'm stealing your Utopian trap quote for a motd on one of my servers. =)

"...alcohol and tobacco, two drugs that are far more harmful than cannabis by any rational accounting."
There you go with that "rational" thing. Those two are socially acceptable additions.

The Utopian trap of thinking you can make everyone perfect just results in a lot of imperfect people being ground under your heel.

Beautifully said, Modus. And I laughed out loud at this:

When drinkers drive, they get into car accidents. When stoners drive, they forget to get in the car first.

In all fairness, if a stoned person does manage to find the wheel, they can be dangerous, since THC can interfere with your perception of time. But there are plenty of legal drugs - booze, tranquilizers, sleep aids, painkillers, etc. - whose effects on drivers are as bad or worse, and no one seems to be proposing that we ban those.

In particular, Mike conspicuously ignores the question of how we should deal with alcohol and tobacco, two drugs that are far more harmful than cannabis by any rational accounting. His arguments would seem to apply equally well to those drugs. What about it, Mike, are you arguing for a return of Prohibition? It worked so well the first time...

"Its hard to not intermingle legality with morality when it comes to this argument."
Whose morality? It's not a black & white issue. For some, alcohol is a deadly sin (see Prohibition), while for most, a beer after work isn't going to kill anyone (and it won't). For some, dancing and music are moral issues. If you think it's wrong, you're free not to dance. If you want to force others to not dance, you'd better bring some pretty good arguments about the deadly harm of getting one's groove on.

"For people that think that using drugs is their choice and they can do what they want with their body, I wonder if they are beholden to anyone."
If their choice to use drugs doesn't harm anyone, you've got no argument. If their choice harms others a little, you've got a little argument. The argument against pot*1, as far as I can see, is that it makes slow, lazy people a little slower and a little lazier (I assume you're smart enough to know that most of the anti-pot propaganda, like Reefer Madness, is simple fear mongering*). The same can be said for television, but I don't see it on the Schedule 1 list with pot, along with a bunch of drugs that are really, really bad. Pot, meanwhile, makes you think that it's time to break out the acoustic guitar.
Keeping drugs illegal doesn't help the genuine addicts. It just puts them in jail. Punishing people for an addiction is exactly the wrong thing to do (for one thing, the threat of punishment caused some to avoid getting treatment). A just societ doesn't punish addiction. It treats it (that drugs aren't a cause but a symptom is another layer of conversation entirely).
*1 Note: Pot does make some people paranoid. Anecdotal, I know, but people that I've met for whom pot made them paranoid avoid it for precisely that reason.
*2 Note: I remember an anti-pot PSA that had two kids getting high. They then dug out dad's gun and one shot the other. Oddly, up until the end, with the anti-drug splash, I was sure it was for gun control.

"And because I live in a wealthy industrialized country I feel I have the responsibility to the world at large to leave the world a better place."
So I assume you're for banning alcohol then? ...Rock music? Pants on women?...Mixed-race marriages?...any other thing that others try to ban or regulate that you're fine with?
A world with legal pot would be a little more relaxed, with a lot more shows on TV like Spongebob Squarepants.
The case of Portugal should, hopefully, be illuminating.

"My brother/friend/wife has no more right to slam lines of coke and heroin up their nose..."
Actually, they do. Their autonomy is not yours to legislate, unless it harms others (the Law isn't to protect people from themselves. It's to protect people from other people). Lots of people get by self-medicating with little to no harm to themselves or others (and you believe that "a little harm" justifies criminalization, the logical end of that puts everybody in jail). Coke fuels Wall Street and hospitals. The reason you don't commonly hear about those cases is that they get by without stealing your car stereo. Also, they aren't poor brown people (all Men are equal under the Law, but some are more equal than others).
And the only reason an upper like coffee isn't a target of the Moral Police (exept the Mormon ones) is that it's the fuel of the office.

"...than they do putting a gun to their head."
Again, it's their life. I'd try to talk them out of it and help them get some professional help to find the cause of whatever's leading them to self-harm, but I'm not the omniscient Police State. You can try to help, but you can't save everyone. Life isn't an ideal. The Utopian trap of thinking you can make everyone perfect just results in a lot of imperfect people being ground under your heel. Life is messy.

"I believe it is the responsibility of a society at large to promote virtue."
Again, whose idea of virtue? I'm sure that Taliban-era Afghanistan thought their version of Sharia promoted virtue, but I suspect your line is considerably less conservative than theirs.

"Before people go trying to satisfy their craving for pleasure I don't understand why they don't ask questions like, 1) would I want my family and friends to see me doing this,"
There's no shame in getting your toke on. No more than having a snifter of brandy.

"2) would I want to see my family and friends doing this,"
Dude, you've obviously never hung around stoners. Alcoholics drink alone. Stoners smoke in groups. Then they eat nachos.

"...and 3) what if everyone in society did what I am about to do?"
If everybody dropped liquor and took up pot, there'd be a giant reduction in violence. I've been at parties with booze and, almost inevitably, fistfights break out. The worst stoners do is forget who chipped in for pizza.
When drinkers drive, they get into car accidents. When stoners drive, they forget to get in the car first. With the former, we punish them for getting drunk then doing something stupid. With the latter, we punish them for getting high…even if no one else is harmed and/or there's no risk of harm to anyone else.

"…and 'the world would be a pretty miserable place if everyone took a turn slamming a line up their nose in a bathroom stall'."
I hate to sound flippant, but you must've missed the 70's and most of the 80's. There's a reason why the fashion was so terrible. People were having too much fun to notice. I hear that intercourse was quite popular at the time. I keep hoping for that particular fad to return.

"I don't know why these questions and their answers aren't enough to dissuade people from promoting legalization."
If what you do doesn't harm me, it's none of my business. That's Liberty. Liberty is the right to do something, if it doesn't infringe on the Liberty of others to not be harmed, even if someone else thinks that that action is stupid.

I don't know why these questions and their answers aren't enough to dissuade people from promoting legalization

Because criminalising drug use doesn't even begin to address the moral aspect. If drug use (as opposed to drug supply) is illegal it actually creates a situation where criminality can thrive, people can be exploited, vast profits are generated and terrorism funded. At the same time criminalisation reduces drug use not one jot! If drug use is legalised and the supply is heavily regulated and taxed the atrocious social fallout is mitigated, users have "safe" products they use in an environment that is also safe. Revenue is generated for legitimite government which could be hypothecated for drug rehab programs. Then at least you have a chance of addressing the moral issues.

I always come up with, "no, I wouldn't want my loved ones to see me doing this", "no I would never want my loved ones to do what I am about to do", and "the world would be a pretty miserable place if everyone took a turn slamming a line up their nose in a bathroom stall".

I don't know why these questions and their answers aren't enough to dissuade people from promoting legalization. Maybe everybody else doesn't think they are good questions to ask.

Overeating can lead to many health disorders which are far more destructive than recreational use of cannibis. Adult-onset diabetes is an incredibly disabling disease and incredibly expensive. It ruins lives and drains dollars from medicare, all from being addicted to food.

This helps put things into perspective, I think, because it shows that many things, even things which are necessary to survive can be addictive and can have grave consequences. So I suppose that legalizing some drugs, ones that are not terribly destructive, would not usher in the downfall of society here in the US.

Cheers,

matt

I'm totally pro-drugs, but I'm not a radical libertarian. Crack, Meth, Heroin and other drugs which are ultra-destructive should not be legalised. I think the standard should be against alcohol: worse than alcohol, banned, safer than alcohol, allowed.

Ultimately Prohibition failed because it tried to eliminate the supply of alcohol without reducing the demand for alcohol. If you could target both the supply and the demand then it would work.

Actually, you would just need to target the demand. Supply would naturally follow it. All you need for drug prohibition to make people not want to do drugs.

Ultimately Prohibition failed because it tried to eliminate the supply of alcohol without reducing the demand for alcohol. If you could target both the supply and the demand then it would work.