Should the US legalize drugs?

[The Ghost of RubangB]

I think drugs should definitely be legalized. It's not like our laws are actually based on harm to the user, because alcohol kills more people per year than every other drug combined. It kills through liver failure, alcohol overdose, drunk driving, and it causes domestic abuse that destroys families. But AT LEAST it doesn't make people go blind anymore, like it did (rarely) during Prohibition. And AT LEAST it doesn't create a giant bootlegging gangster element of society with shootouts and deaths everywhere. Unless we can magically make the whole world stop drinking, then keeping alcohol legal, clean, and taxing it a lot is the safest and smartest thing we can do for people's safety and taxes. I think all other drugs should be handled the same way.

If we legalize drugs, we'd have fewer people in prisons which would lower our taxes and give our cops and courts more time to handle crimes that have victims, rather than "crimes of recreation with your own body." And as you said, we'd elminate the drug cartels instantly, saving tons of lives from the murders and from the dirty drugs.

For more information, I shall pass the mic to LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition): http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php

On their front page it shows Al Capone and Pablo Escobar, and says "Same problem... same solution!"

I read about these guys for the first time a few years ago. They're a group of conservative cops who don't want to arrest drug users anymore because they'd rather be protecting people AND lowering taxes. What could be smarter than that?