As a non-drug user, I have many friends (mostly conservative types) who ask me why I am against the War on Drugs and in favor of Decriminalization. My goal is never to win an argument, rather it is to improve both their lives and my own.
Taking that approach, I present a mixture of both facts and philosophy which has worked well for me in helping others to stop buying into the prevailing fear-based narrative and take a rational look at the situation. Below I will share many of the points that I use along with citations that can help you back up those points.
Why I’m against the War on Drugs and in favor of Decriminalization:
First off, let me start by saying that I am not pro-drug abuse. I've actually never smoked pot and don't have any plans on doing so in the future, legal or no. Like anything, drugs can be used properly or improperly. For example, Marijuana has been shown to help treat glaucoma, control epileptic seizures, slow or stop the spread of cancer, soothe tremors for people with Parkinson's disease, and treat PTSD to name a few (0). That being said, government propaganda has been telling us for years that Marijuana is a terrifying substance that has no value. This is patently false (1).
If for no other reason, I am against drug criminalization because neither I, nor any person, nor any man made government, has the moral authority to dictate what another human being can and can not put into their own bodies. While this authority technically does exist in our present day, it is taken by force and is immoral imho. A person who is told that they can or can not do something with their body is not free. They are a slave to the person or government that is placing the restrictions upon them.
Like the prohibition of alcohol before it, the prohibition on pot has not decreased the abuse of pot or any drug for that matter (2)
Prohibition increases the cost of the prohibited substance by limiting the supply. This hurts the people who use the substance, whether they do so responsibly or not.
With profit potential so high, criminal elements swoop in to capitalize on the profits that can be made off of the prohibited substance (3). Both crime and violence increases as a result. When was the last time you heard of someone dying in a rum run gone bad? The reason you haven't is because criminals are not doing rum runs anymore because once alcohol was legalized, the profit potential dropped due to legal supply going up. The criminals no longer had a corner on the alcohol market so they left it. On the other hand, my brother just had a friend get killed in a pot deal gone bad. He wasn’t even involved, but was rather at the wrong place at the wrong time.
It actually can cause the substance itself to become dangerous and more addictive. Beer sales dropped during the alcohol prohibition, but liquor sales skyrocketed (4). This is because less liquor was necessary to get a buzz and thus was easier to hide and more profitable to transport. People who had normally just stuck with beer began drinking liquor which is much more damaging. The government even poisoned alcohol (5) during the prohibition in an attempt to get people to stop.
Prohibition creates new victimless crimes and puts many non-violent “criminals” in prison which is a strain on society and does nothing to help the person overcome their addiction (6). This also gives the government more power to infringe on our 4th Amendment rights because they "smelled something" (7).
Prohibition via the war on drugs has led to the increased militarization of our police forces (8) which is terrifying if you ask me. No-Knock swat raids have increased exponentially (9), with many innocent people becoming victims of overzealous police forces including a recent incident where a baby had his face blown apart by a flash-bang grenade that landed in his crib (10).
Those are the main reasons for why I am against marijuana prohibition and the war on drugs in general.
So how do we deal with the abuse of marijuana and other drugs as a society since such abuse can be a very real problem? The war on drugs is a dismal failure and doing more of the same will not change the results. If we want to see drug abuse decrease in the US, we need to do something different. I think the answer is a simple, if not an easy one: Treat drug abuse as a public health problem rather than a criminal one.
For the sake of not making an already overly long post longer, I will instead provide links to two articles to review. If you do not read any of the linked articles at the bottom, I would highly recommend at least going through these. They do a great job of showing how we can see a decrease in drug abuse in the US, something that the majority of us want:
A) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html
B) https://news.vice.com/article/ungass-portugal-what-happened-after-decriminalization-drugs-weed-to-heroin
I’ll end with a question that I ask people who tell me they think the War on Drugs is a good thing. Consider how you would respond in the following scenario:
You find out that your child is addicted to meth. Do you A) take your child to the police station and have them put into prison, or B) try to get them psychological, emotional and medical help?
If the answer you choose for your child is B, then why would you choose A for other people’s children?
Cited articles for further review:
(0) http://www.businessinsider.com/health-benefits-of-medical-marijuana-2014-4/#it-can-be-used-to-treat-glaucoma-1
(1) http://www.businessinsider.com/health-benefits-of-medical-marijuana-2014-4
(2) http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/chart-says-war-drugs-isnt-working/322592/
(3) http://riseofthemafia.weebly.com/rise-of-organized-crime.html
(4) http://www.efficientdrinker.com/blog/alcohol-sources-during-prohibition/
(5) http://time.com/3665643/deadly-drinking/
(6) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/drug-war-mass-incarceration_n_3034310.html
(7) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/03/31/the-drug-war-exception-to-the-fourth-amendment/?utm_term=.df79e454e02e
(8) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-hank-johnson/the-failed-war-on-drugs-i_b_6043558.html
(9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/25/utah-police-reform_n_4150625.html
(10) http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/baby-in-coma-after-police-grenade-dropped-in-crib-during-drug-raid/