I think that it is important to separate the discussion between the so-called soft drugs, which as far as I can tell is principally marijuana, and hard drugs like cocaine and its derivatives, methamphetamines and heroin. I'm not going to get into the health benefits of marijuana. There has been so much propaganda on both sides of the issue that it is impossible to asses whether or not there is any real benefit. I will say that in terms of danger to people other than the user, marijuana seems comparatively benign. Someone who is high on marijuana is generally not dangerous. They certainly don't tend toward violence, whereas reactions of people on harder drugs are more unpredictable, particularly with chronic users. You don't hear many stories about potheads committing violent crimes because they were high or because they were trying to get money for their next fix, petty crimes maybe but nothing extreme. Chronic users of the harder drugs will often do whatever they think they have to do to get their next fix. It's gotten to the point where the term "crack whore" has entered the common lexicon. Legalizing drugs like that will serve no good purpose. One of the common arguments for legalization is that by legalizing these drugs it will lower the price and allow users to afford their fix with out resorting to crime. The gaping hole in that argument is that many of these drugs aren't all that expensive in the first place and if the chronic users could hold any kind of meaningful employment they could afford their fix now, but they can't. Making these drugs cheaper isn't really going to change things. Without steady employment, which very few chronic users will have, they will still be forced to some sort of illegal activity to finance their habit. The only thing that will change is who profits, a drug cartel in Juarez or a pharmaceutical company in Connecticut. Furthermore, I suspect that legalization of these drugs would lead to more usage by people who formally had no access or simply were unwilling to break the law to do it. Marijuana is a totally different drug and the discussion about whether to legalize it or not needs to be framed separately from the discussions about harder drugs.

SFC W