Singer Tony Bennett calls for legalizing drugs

[TheWraith]

19. Holy crap, you and me agree on something!

You missed one thing, though--people who don't believe that this is the case need to look at the history of alcohol prohibition in the US, which demonstrates many of the same realities. Drinking went underground, resulting in a highly violent black market, and actually MORE alcohol consumption than either before or after prohibition. Not to mention being the source of the old myth that homemade moonshine makes you go blind. Since methanol was never illegal (as opposed to ethanol, since ethanol gets you drunk but methanol gets you dead) unethical bootleggers would sometimes cut a little methanol into their product to boost the proof. As you said, purity and safety.

Here in the US, a study of Department of Justice statistics showed that roughly 89% of murder suspects have prior criminal records--and so do 75% of their victims. That's the face, right there, of gang warfare over the drug trade. When we eliminated prohibition and got rid of alcohol as a source of black-market fighting the crime rate in the US fell by almost two thirds. I have no doubt the same thing would happen with drugs.