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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Legalizing All Drugs

Ok, everyone who reads this knows that I am all for the legalization of marijuana, but of late there has been a lot of talk in the press about legalizing all drugs. This is certainly an extreme view amongst legalization circles, and on this one I am not entirely decided. I mean on one hand, its not really my business what someone else injects into their body, if they want to kill themselves slowly or quickly that's their business, on the other hand many drugs are highly addictive and once a person starts its hard to stop, although I reject the notion that after one taste you can be hopelessly addicted to ANY substance for life, I don't care how addictive it is using anything once does not make you an adict.

The money that would be saved in enforcement would be beyond measure really, but how much of that would just be redirected to health care due to deteriorating health. There is a simple solution to that and say you can't get treated under governemnt health plans for ailments resulting from dangerous behaviours, it has to come out of your own poket. This is something I am actually rather a proponent of, ie if you are an alchoholic and your liver has issues, you have to pay for the treatment, if you are a smoker and get lung cancer you have to pay for the treatment, if you are a meth adict you have to pay for the treatment to get you out. However accidents and general illnesses of course would be covered. Of course the problem with this line of thought is where do you draw the line? Is a skydiver elegiable for coverage if his shute malfunctions? Skydiving is a dangerous activity.

In my mind marijuana obviously should be legalized, the proven negative effects are so incredibly small as to not even count. There is no logical reason to keep marijuana illegal. Other drugs, I still am unsure about. Though, as with marijuana, regulation is always the better option to prohibition.

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