Idk, we can definitely talk about marijuana but cocaine and eroine are very different... Legalize them would be at least very risky. Anyhow we need to move in a different direction than kill/arrest everybody, it simply not gonna work.

How do you justify your bias toward specific drugs? Why should alcohol and oxycontin be legal and cocaine illegal?

What gives society the right to choose for me what I may consume for myself?

I used to live in the US, now I live in Europe and I can see what you mean.

However I can argue that we should think twice before to make legal something that get you addicted with the first dose and mess up with your brain in a so heavy way.

(Yes I do know about alcohol but it is a cultural and, by the way, different issue)

Yeah, alcohol is a different issue. In that trying to quit alcohol can actually kill you. Trying to quit cold turkey can put you in a hospital where they will start administering alcohol through an IV to save your life.

Comparing alcohol and cocaine is absurd, alcohol by any reasonable measure is just about one of the hardest drugs there is, and causes massively more societal harm than cocaine.

But we are supposed to make it a special exception because it's old? All that really amounts to is "Lets ban this because people who seem alien to me use it, but lets keep this other thing legal because 'normal' people use it." It is a xenophobic argument.

While not outright legalizing, Portugal's massive decriminalization applied to heroine and cocaine, and their problem seems to have gotten better rather than worse.

In Portugal is illegal have drugs... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal (Interesting wiki to read by the way...) They not only "decriminalized" drugs, they also put a lot of money in prevention with TV ads and more... They educated people first... I will say that it is the best/only way we should follow.

Right, like I said, they stopped short of full legalization; it was simply a massive decriminalization. They also put money into education, as you say, and into treatment.

My point was simply that "heroine and cocaine are so dangerous that we have to keep them criminal" is not necessarily a valid position. Your point, which seems to be that such changes should not be made in isolation but supported by other policy measures, is certainly one that needs stressing as well.

I see this issue from a completely different perspective. I see it as, we have a social problem: Some people use drugs that ruin their lives. Rather than using a lot of counseling and trying to actually help people get off their habit, we use the criminal justice system to put them and those who help them in jail, and providing windfall profits to criminals who are willing to ignore the laws. Economically, these are equivalent to a high tax on illegal drug use; they raise the street price. But instead of providing tax revenues, this tax is extremely expensive to enforce and provides no revenues. Under this perspective, the current system is pretty much unjustifiable. You could just ban advertising and tax it heavily and use the tax money for anti-drug rehab programs, and have the same effects as we currently have without all the drug violence and mass imprisonment.

Has legalization shown to increase consumption? Here in Canada, the rate of marijuana usage is roughly equal to the rate of tobacco usage even though only one is a legal substance. It indicates to me that someone interested in using a drug is going to regardless of the legalities.

Or maybe they could just, you know, legalize it?

What's the big deal of replacing one cartel with another? I mean, I understand that's what's inevitably going to happen - it's just sad to see widespread kowtowing by deillegalization supporters sucking up to power.

The war will never end because of how profitable it is. Only if the 'fight' comes here to the states will they ever begin to think about legalizing anything.

When people say "it's profitable" I think what they really should say is that it's profitable for one group of individuals, when at the same time very unprofitable for the other group(s) of individuals (namely, consumers and victims). Moreover, unprofitability for the latter greatly exceeds the profitability for the former and it is only by coercing and power is it possible to preserve the status quo.

Indeed - this article seems to have an interesting answer to the wrong question.

Illegal drugs is only a small part of the problem. The bigger issue is government corruption in Mexico.

I see nobody wants to admit it. Instead, you just want easier access to pot...

That like every problem is still related to Education (note the capital E)