Joe public will listen to what you have to say more if you're not provoking at the same time. In general by provoking, you're just going to cause an equal and opposite reaction ... which is kind of counter to what your goals are.

That's just the way things are. When someone's nodding their head in agreement to most of what you say ... it's kind of counterproductive to rile them up against you.

BK,

I can bet you that the vast majority of Americans would disagree with you. You also have no way of proving any of your theories, so whats the point?

I'll start with one counterpoint. Lets say we legalize drugs. What do you think all of the drug dealers are going to do?

Go away?
Go to college?
Get a real job?

No...they will find other ways to get money and most of those ways will be illegal. They have to eat. They have to buy rims. They have to impress their friends. They need money. They will switch to some other illegal activity. Who knows what it would be, but theres no doubt in my mind crime in other areas would go way up. I dont even think they would stop dealing drugs. Prices might go down, but they will still sell them and there will still be turf wars. People will still die in the streets.

There might be less drug murders. We have no way of knowing that, but legalizing drugs would create a whole host of other problems. Dont tell me you really believe that more people wouldnt try drugs if they were legal. More peope ltrying them means more people addicted. Your stats showing how many people are / were adicted are outdated. You cant compare legal heroin 80 years ago to now. Times have changed. Values have changed for the worse in those 80 years. Im sure back then alot of people would never try drugs. If it were socially acceptable and legal, I firmly believe that alot more people would try them now. People have alot more discretionary income now as well. More people would do drugds. More people would become addicted. There would be major problems in the healthcare industry. Would drug addiction and treatment be covered? Rates are already skyrocketing to the point where too many people cant afford it, especially retirees and poor people (who would without a doubt be affected more than the rest of us).

These are just a few issues coming to me off the top of my head. Im sure there are many many more. Legalizing hard drugs would be a major catastophe.

We're losing the war on drugs because we are fighting like we fought in Vietnam and like we are fighting in Iraq. We arent really trying to win. We're trying to fight while being politically correct.

We could easily stop most large shipments of drugs from entering the country if we really wanted to, but god forbid some drug dealing scumbags rights might get violated. Laws need to be changed. You want to fight a real drug war?

Take the fight to them and stop allowing the drug to ever enter this country in the first place. Most of the drug entering this country come from just a few places. We know full well which drug lords are the biggest violators. We know where they are and we could burn them down very easily. There are plenty of ways to fight the drug war for real, but until we get serious it will never stop.

I wouldnt be surprised if alot of politicians were gettinng payoffs from some of these drug lords. They take payoffs (uh, I mean contributions) from every other special interest group. Oil companies, pharmacutical companies, insurance companies. Why not drug dealers? The rich get richer because of corruption.

If the Columbian drug farms are ruining our society then I say its a matter of national security that we stop it. Yes Im serious.

Again, if you dont want to really fight a drug war then shut the hell up about it and watch your citizens kill each other over drugs.

There are also other ways of stopping the drugs from coming here without bombing foregin soil (although Im not oppossed to that at all).

A simple example....

We publicly announce that bringing drugs into our country is an act of war. We set up satelite surveillance of the drug farms. We watch the drugs loaded into planes and then we shoot them down before they enter the country. Dont want to get shot down? Dont enter our airspace with drug cargo.

Don;t want people growing and exporting drugs? Remove your hypocritical farm subsidies.