Let's legalize meth, and every other such recreational drug.

[MadHound]

59. Well, lots of recreational substances, and actions, destroy your body,

Some of them just as fast as meth.

As to your question, the UK and other countries with various legalized drugs generally have a better social safety net. The thing is however, people who are addicted in this country are already using and abusing government assistance because they are spending all of their money on black market drugs. In my younger days I lived in, well, let's say an interesting neighborhood. I had a neighbor who was actually quite a nice guy, but terribly hooked on prescription downers, drugs like oxy and such. Of course, like many addicts, he dealt as well, but also spent all that money he made, a few thousand a week, on his habit. Since he wasn't working above board, he qualified for all sorts of government programs and used them.

Legalized drugs would be much cheaper, and by treating drug addiction as a health problem with no criminal stigma, more people would be getting help and getting well.

As far as the money issues go, well, taxing the drugs would work well. Take pot. If you are running a legal, legit dope market, it's going to take probably a buck a pound to produce pot. It is, after all, a weed that grows anywhere and is no harder to cultivate and process than any other plant. By the time it gets through the wholesaler, distribution and various other middlemen, the corner store is going to probably charge fifteen, twenty dollars an ounce. Tack on another twenty dollars per ounce in taxes, and at forty bucks an ounce, that dope is going to fly off the shelves, since last I knew, and it's been many a year, good bud is going for around one hundred an ounce.

Now, let's do some math. The estimated amount of dope smoked in this country is currently running somewhere between twenty and twenty five thousand tons each year. Let's take the low side of that, twenty thousand tons. At a tax rate of twenty dollars per ounce, that works out to be 12.8 billion dollars that you can use for education and treatment. That's just revenue from dope alone. You can easily double or triple that amount when you tax the various other drugs in the same manner, namely in a large amount, but with a total price that is significantly below the current black market price.

Furthermore, since you're going to be keeping people out of jail, a lot of revenue that is currently going into prisons can be diverted to treatment and education as well. Start subtracting the costs to society that come from the secondary crime wave that prohibition brings, start adding the jobs and revenue that an entire new industry will bring in, and I think there will be plenty of money for full treatment and education, and much more.

However I do agree, we just have got to cut our military budget.