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By Root 683 0

What’s the point? These people are not invading my body or my rights or my property, or yours. These people are not harming anyone but themselves—and they have the freedom to do that. What’s more, the state is spending vast amounts of our nation’s resources (tax dollars) attempting to fight an un-winnable fight. When something like drugs (or prostitution) is prohibited, black markets pop up with all the corollary problems that surround them. When free exchange is permitted, a legitimate and workable market develops with supply and demand to act as a check.

The Lies the Government Tells You 2.0

My Fox News colleague John Stossel recently aired a show on the Drug War and debunked some government-created myths like “some drugs are so addictive that you are hooked the first time you use them.” John makes the argument that drugs are not quite as addictive as the government wants us to believe, and the statistics back him up.

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health gathered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 8.5 million people have tried crack, while only 359,000 are regular users (regular users are defined as those who use it at best once in thirty days); 3.8 million have tried heroin, while only 213,000 are regular users. If these drugs are so addictive, why is there not a greater retention rate? Where are these first-time user addicts of whom the government speaks?

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Also, the government wants us to believe that if drugs were to be legalized, there would be far more abuse of them. John Stossel maintains that there is very little evidence to support this assumption. As many know, in the Netherlands, marijuana has been legal for years. The Dutch, however, are far less likely to smoke than Americans. Fully 38 percent of American adolescents have smoked pot, while only 20 percent of Dutch teens have; in other words, marijuana rates in the Netherlands, where pot is legal, are half the rate of those in the United States, where pot gets you jail time!40 The Dutch government’s answer to this discrepancy is telling: “We’ve succeeded in making pot boring.”41 The United States government should follow suit.

Drug Legalization Would Save the Government Money!

Jeffrey Miron, a professor of economics at Harvard, authored a study on the economics of marijuana legalization. He concluded that marijuana legalization would reduce government spending by $7.7 billion annually.42 Its legalization would generate $2.4 billion of tax revenue annually if marijuana were taxed like all other goods and $6.2 billion annually if marijuana were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco.43

To put this amount in perspective, Miron takes this calculation and asserts that the $14 billion in combined annual savings and revenues would “cover the securing of all ‘loose nukes’ in the former Soviet Union in less than three years.” “Just one year’s savings would cover the full cost of anti-terrorism port security measures required by the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002.”44 Talk about putting money to good use! The esteemed Nobel Laureate in Economics, Milton Friedman, and more than five hundred economists called for this drug debate to be brought to light as there is taxpayer money to be saved and government power to be tamed.

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Surprise, Surprise: The State Breaks Its Own Laws in Combating the “Drug War”

If the government would profit financially from the legalization of drugs, why won’t it concede? Because it likes to waste your tax dollars and assert control over you by violating your privacy and other rights in the process. Don’t believe me?

Every day, the government uses unconstitutional means to conduct SWAT raids on homes that may (or may not) have drugs inside. Often, these police tips come from unreliable sources, but the government goes in anyway. According to these police, no judicial due process or search warrant is required, and the government is not obligated to knock at your door. Law enforcement may enter your home, unannounced, in the dead of night.

While