Should heroin be legal? Yes. Not only yes, but absolutely yes. First the explanation, then a look at counter-arguments.
Drug gangs exist simply because drugs are illegal. They import them or grow/make them and they sell them. Eliminate the drug laws and the gangs go away, period. This is obvious from the days of Prohibition. You don't see gangs running anything except drugs. Why? Because they are illegal and there is a profitable black market. By criminalizing drugs you create the environment for violent gangs to run the black market where no such environment existed.
I could list other reasons, particularly regarding individual freedom, which are also reason enough to legalize drugs. I believe if there is no victim there is no crime, and to make someone a criminal for owning a plant flies in the face of anyone who seriously believes in individual freedoms. Ron Paul has entered legislation to legalize marijuana and it is the only logical choice. In the United States we arrest 850,000 people per year simply for possessing a plant, not for using it. The crime is for POSSESSION.
But the elimination of the violent drug gangs is reason enough to legalize drugs. 43,000 Mexicans have lost their lives in the last 5 years in the drug wars in Mexico simply because drugs are illegal.
The main argument I have heard against legalizing drugs is that drugs would be everywhere and people would be dying in the street because they would be cheap and easily available. Let me tell you something in case you haven't noticed, drugs are easily available today in spite of a 40-year war on drugs. The fact that they are higher because they are illegal only gives people more reason to burglarize your house to pay for their habit. Is that what you want? If people need their fix they will get it one way or another regardless of the cost, or do you think they have a choice?
So I don't think there would be any more deaths than there already are today. But even if you could make that argument, which is purely hypothetical at this point, if you want it to be illegal then you are approving of the system that creates gangs, punishes the poor who have to live in high crime areas, make the job of the police much more dangerous, pay much more in taxes for all of the government agencies necessary for enforcement, and on and on. And who are the losers in this system? The Poor and the Minorities because they can't afford the lawyers.
Legalize drugs and the gangs go away, everyone is much safer, and you pay less taxes and make the job of being a police officer less dangerous, plus save a bundle on taxes. Who would be against such a system? Obviously the people who are benefiting from it. Just be objective and you will see that the obvious winners are government and government contractors.
And not only are you not more safe that drugs are illegal, you are in more danger because of the violence necessary to protect the illicit drugs as well as you are much more prone to being burglarized. I personally know two different cases where people woke up with a burglar in their bedroom as well as a woman who walked in on two burglars in her house. Sure, burglary exists anyway, but don't help create the environment for it to thrive.
Ron Paul is right, yet again.
