Month: November 2010

By Tom Snyder and Tracy Schreiber

Today the people of California get to decide whether to legalize marijuana. Let’s hope they decide against it.

Whatever happens, however, let’s put an end to the stupid arguments that libertarians, liberals and red diaper doper babies make in favor of legalizing drugs, including marijuana.

One of the arguments these airheads make is that the War on Drugs is “unwinnable.” When people say it’s an “unwinnable” war, what do they really mean? What does it mean to win the drug war? You can’t possibly mean winning the drug war means no one using drugs, because, by that same logic, the war against violent crime is unwinnable.

This argument is specious. When confronted with such an argument, ask the person, What level of drug use constitutes “winning” the War on Drugs? Just because there’s rampant crime of any sort, that shouldn’t make us just give up!

Another argument in favor of legalization has the pro-legalization person asking the anti-legalization person, “If you make drugs legal, would you do drugs?”

The person’s answer to that question probably will be no, but what if it isn’t?

Of course, if they legalized rape or prostitution tomorrow, we ourselves wouldn’t suddenly become a pimp or a prostitute, much less rape anyone. Just because the average person wouldn’t do these things does not mean that a lot of other people wouldn’t do them.

Robbing banks is a perfect example here. If they made robbing banks legal, or-de-criminalized it, the average person probably isn’t going to start robbing banks, but many other people will.

Often, the pro-legalization person cites America’s allegedly bad experience with the Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s.

The fact is, however, during Prohibition, the consumption of alcohol did indeed decline. Thus, Prohibition did indeed inhibit drinking.