About 1. : Alcohol has been the most prevalent drug for hundreds of years, even thousands; way before any of the other drugs were made illegal. Many of those other drugs did exist before, but for whatever reason, no drug has ever enjoyed the level of widespread use that alcohol has (not that i know of). It is most likely, in my humble opinion, that it will always be that way.

About 4. : As I understand it, there are three major reasons to join a gang. One is status. Another is security. Another is respect.

As with anything else in society, if you have money you have status. If you take away drug profits from gangs, you deliver a strong blow to their status.

People join gangs for security because they don’t trust the police. Not only do they not trust them, but they see the police as an enemy. A great deal of the reason there is an adversarial relationship between police and young people in low income communities is because of the drug war.

Also, many people in low income communities feel they don’t get respect from the authorities or from society in general. The drug war has a lot to do with that.

It’s true that gang killings would not disappear completely after legalization. However, it is very likely that gang activity itself would decrease.

The biggest reasons to legalize hard drugs in some way are to reduce the power of the scary cartels (What’s stopping these smuggling specialists- hey, want a cheap underwater submarine?- from teaming up with political terrorists? Nothing) and to largely eliminate the huge numbers of burglaries and robberies, some leading to murder, that are committed to obtain funds for black market drugs. It wouldn’t just reduce such crime, it would reduce the in many areas pervasive fear of such crime too. Under legalization, addicts may suffer more, but their need to inflict suffering on the rest of us will be way reduced. That’s how it should be- addicts should suffer from their addiction, not the rest of us.

As the folks at stopthedrugwar.org said, if Mr. Kleiman thinks 15,000 a year US dead from the war on drugs is too high, what is his best estimate? If cannabis and/or cannabis components prove to have anti-cancer properties, as appears to be the case, 15,000 could turn out to be way low. The alcohol related deaths caused by prohibiting cannabis have to be taken into account as well.

There IS a hideous monster out there called prohibition, ruining lives left and right and causing a corruption fest and a snitch fest. Cannabis prohibition is a particularly degenerate enterprise. Doesn’t every serious person know alcohol is much more dangerous? What the hell is the point of trying to force people to use killer alcohol instead of cannabis?

You claim that the heaviest drug users consumption responds to price very well. Economists such as Milton Friedman would disagree, it does not respond to price very well. In a large majority of heavy usage(of addictive drugs) cases, users are physically addicted to the drug, meaning that their usage will not go down if they have to pay more of their income for the same amount. Similarly, it will not scale upward well with price decreases, as after a certain point of addiction one is simply avoiding withdrawals, and rarely does one get as much enjoyment anymore. Lighter users(the larger class of users), would respond much stronger to price changes.

I agree that there probably would be a spike if legalization occurred, especially with marijuana. However, it would be just that, a spike! Usage rates would come back down with time. Fortunately, we have some _actual_ evidence for this, which is the nation of Portugal. Since decriminalization of drug usage(not sale), usage rates have gone down across the board, and treatment rates have gone up(much preferable to imprisonment).

The obvious solution to 2. is a huge price drop. While you claim that it would lead to a huge rise in usage, the Portugal case summarily disproves that.

As for 4. anyone who believes drug legalization would stop all gang activity/killings is delusional. But drug trafficking is a _major_ source of income for gangs in general, probably greater than that of gun trafficking(I do not know the numbers, but drug demand and supply is higher based on what I’ve seen). Legalizing drugs here would remove a massive portion of drug sales out of gangs hands and into legitimate chemical and agricultural companies. Furthermore, many paramilitary/guerilla movements are funded by cultivation of coca bush or opium poppy, and we could give them a run for their money too.

I’ll spare you the accusation of tacitly supporting terrorism for keeping heroin illegal.