Before you start firing off your opinions all willy nilly, i would like you do a bit of research digging into the drug decriminalization that occured in Portugal 9 years ago. There are a whole range of internet articles, scattered with pretty figures (that funnily enough don't seem to have ever shown up on CNN or BBC). Watch this too; reason.tv - Videos > Glenn Greenwald on Drug Decriminalization in Portugal and Obama's Iffy Take on Civil Liberties Drug decriminialization and liberation is firing up in parts of the EU as of late, although it seems it is only the product of desperation in countries with heavy health issues that come from drug abuse. But i'd like to take that one step further, and think about the goverment taxation of drugs. If alcohol or tobacco were discovered in the past 20 years, they would have been illegal. The only reason they aren't is because they are part of the framework that funds our countries. If drugs were included into these taxation procedures, they would be making money from our recreational use of drugs, instead of spending money trying to stop us.
If this information is from a reliable source then yes of course it would make sense to go towards decriminalization we can all equate it to the all popular recon armor where people were hacking other accounts just to obtain the legendary armor permutation (forgive me if any terms are incorrect) but now, it is achievable and anyone with ODST can have it so now with its air of mystery and the Curtin consisting of its lack of obtanibility removed it is no longer special and even now its use is lacking then when it came out instead of "OH ITS RECON!!!" it's "oh its recon..." and all of the hype has disappeared (yes, the comparison to an online armor lacks the seriousness of this topic but I am aware that we are here to discuss the topic not the other persons strange comments). In other words if we were to make illegal drugs legal then it would possibly become in popular because it is just another drug like tobacco and alcohol. But there are certain events that could have happened that should be taken into consideration such things involve that fact the America and Portugal are two VERY different countries. One of the reasons for the decline in drug use could be attributed to the fact that before the act of decriminalization the once illegal drugs were grown in small amounts and therefore not meant to become mass-produced. When Portugal decided to go with decriminalization it made it to where stores could legally sell say heroin and all of a sudden there is a great demand for the illegal substance. This in turn causes the need for the small farms grown in small areas of the illegal substances to produce more than they can actually either afford or generate. This pressures the stores to have to compete for the substance and pay more so they sell it for a higher price than it would normally be sold from a dealer. With the heightened price for the substance more and more people may not have been able to afford it and therefore less was being used people. Then people that were addicted started to instead of turning to find more drugs ask for help since they cannot pay for the drug they go mad without it and ask to get out of it. However this lapse of the amount of drugs available would only be temporary it would take at least 10-15 years to actually get a regular farm going and then there’s the fact that all the space for a farm has probably been taken up and so any farmer wanting to switch to say marijuana would have to pay for the seeds, the manure, pay for probably a license to grow the plant, and many other expenses just to grow it furthering the lapse in time for people to get off of the drugs. The situation in America may however be a lot different. We have the money to buy the drugs if they were in short supply and there is wide open fertile areas that can be used for the newly made “cash-crops” and many farmers could afford to switch to growing plants like marijuana.
I agree, anything in sold in America will be mass produced. I don't think it would become more popular, just cheaper to do. And less money would be spent trying to stop drugs from being produced/smuggled/grown/processed which could be put to other uses, like paying off our mountain of debt. Not to mention the money that would come in from taxation. The age old "what about the children" argument doesn't work either, because drugs would suddenly be harder to obtain than ever before for someone under 21. Illegal dealers see customers, not children (at least the worst of them). Some people might say anything worse than marijuana should stay illegal, and i tend to agree- though I think some mild opiates and non processed coca couldn't be much worse. I'm Kent Brockman and that's my two cents