I would not tax them anymore then they are taxed allready.

> But let's cut to the chase, this is not about drugs and health issues. This is about money and jobs for DEA. Essentially, we're pissing away our tax money to pay for DEA agents and their expensive toys, who, in turn, don't provide any real service.

The burocratic overhead is one reason for sure but I do not think its the most importend one.

I think the most importend one is that the politics does not want to admit that the ware wrong for 50 years. How would that look if the democrats came out with legal drug policys? Tell people X for 50 years and then switch to telling them (not X).

The next reason is the ignorance of the people, 50 years of anti-drug propaganda had a effect. This kind of propaganda becomes self-enforcing after a while. Many people actually belive all that crap that is said about drugs.

This is something you hear far too much, as well. "Legalize them and then tax the hell out of them." It's a good way to find ourselves right back where we started: an illegal drug market (where the market is illegal this time rather than the drugs) which drives up crime.

This drug war is expensive, it costs dollars and lives. It's trivial to end it, but it's not happening. Too many dollars at stake.

I was with you until this, not because I disagree but because I think it's an irrelevant issue. There are many examples of enforcement/regulation wings of the government being rolled back when the political tide turned against them. The issue is that law enforcement expenditures, like military expenditures, are pitched as a response to public fears.

If you talk to older generation, suburban family folks who support criminalization instinctively, their number one stated concern is, in my experience, that they are afraid of drug-related crimes -- robbery, burglary, theft i.e., crimes being committed to support a habit (so the hypothesis goes). Now the obvious response to that is to point out that those things happen now, but then you are engaging an issue of the heart by attacking a point made in their head. This will probably segue into an argument about stiffer criminal penalties -- the exact opposite of what we want -- because the person is still afraid.

DEA toys don't figure into this argument, even if that is the end result, so if you want this to happen before that generation is old and gone you have to have an argument that addresses the core concerns people actually have. If you have to talk about the DEA, even if you are technically correct, I doubt anybody can be swayed by such an argument -- it's all cerebral and doesn't address the central issue, which is fear.

That's MHO anyway.

So there's a source of campaign contributions and other lobbying efforts, or bribery.

And then there's the purely political side. Very few politicians will come out in favor of legalization or decriminalization. Not because they care one way or another. They just don't want to hand a brick to their opponent, which will be used. "Candidate Sluggo is soft on drugs, soft on crime!"

It's a question I haven't considered before, but one that takes a bit of consideration. I certainly don't see it decreasing. (I support legalization by the way, I side with libertarians on issues regarding the choice of what to do with one's body. However, the libertarian camp also advocates a government who's primary concern is protecting citizen's from violence. Just an aside.)

For the former, I don't see how it could do anything but decrease. As to the latter, I suspect initially it would go up, but I don't think that would last. And, the drop off in crimes related to trafficking would more than make up the difference. Having said that, crimes related to trafficking do tend to be heavily concentrated into fewer areas, so the typical suburban white fear-loving voter would probably perceive that crime has gone up.

After all, a big part of the problem is a lack of knowledge in the users on how to manage their use of the substances.

In those seven years I have done: 1) a undergraduate degree 2) a PhD (almost) 3) Spent three years as a full time professional student representative (nee politician). 4) Written approximately 80K words of fiction and non fiction. 5) Learned statistics, programming and web analytics.

So, perhaps weed is necessary but not sufficient for someone to waste their lives. That being said, I have seen many people who get lazy and just waste their lives, but I suspect that many of them would have found another crutch, if they didn't have the weed.