To begin with, politics places too much emphasis on the damaging nature of drugs on society. As Szasz states “There is only one political sin: independence; and only one political virtue: obedience. To put it differently, there is only one offense against authority: self control; and only one obeisance to it: submission to control by authority. Why is self-control, autonomy, such a threat to authority? Because the person who controls himself, who is his own master, has no need for authority to be his master. This, then, renders authority unemployed.” One has a moral right to take the drugs of their choice without government regulation, control, or interference. Man is perfectly capable of deciding whether or not to ingest something that will alter their state of mind. It is t

Next, society suffers financially from the strain on the court system caused by drug offences. As we discussed in class, the average jail sentence for a convicted drug offender is an average of 77 months. For each month that a convicted drug offender is in jail, a financial strain is put on taxpayers’ shoulders. This seems somewhat needless due to the fact that a murderer will spend less time in prison then a drug offender. The government argues that drug abusers pose a threat to peaceable citizens and "the general welfare" of the nation. The United States government (at the federal, state, and local levels) expends most of its policing and incarceration efforts and dollars enforcing a policy of zero tolerance for illegal drugs. Over $40 billion are spent per year to wage the Drug War. The majority of our prison and jail population is made up of drug offenders, many of them non-violent. Thanks largely to the Drug War, the United States incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other developed nation. By eliminating drug laws we will effectively improve the court system. Not only would this eliminate the costs, but it would eliminate the time spent dealing with these cases. Also by legalizing drugs it would allow the government to collect on the money that is currently in circulation in the underground market. The cost of enforcement of drug laws is not insignificant. For 1990 the total Federal budget authority for anti-drug programs was $7.9 billion. The government is currently losing money due to the underground market, and by legalizing drugs it would vastly improve many aspects of the economy. For example it would help the gross domestic product and the gross nation

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