OK, since you're not entirely in fantasy-land....I agree that war on drugs is costly, but I also feel that drug dealers and Biker gangs won't suddenly change to going to church on Sundays and singing in the choir. Criminals will find a way to make a buck, so they shift to another activity...instead of drugs, so the war continues unless you want to make EVERYTHING legal. Criminals and drug dealers are not going to just roll over.
My grandpa tells me stories that his father told him about the bootleggers from rural Missouri back in the day. Wanna know what the crime rate currently is in rural Missouri?
You are focusing on the wrong thing here. Yes, there will be criminals but how about this novel idea: Lets at least try to not create a trillion dollar a year criminal industry for them to profit off of? When there is a HUGE financial interest to be a criminal and to be the biggest baddest criminal around, guess what tends to happen? Removing the financial interests won't remove all of the crime but it will remove a lot of it. Only a relatively small amount of criminals are criminals because they just feel like being low life criminal assholes. Most of them have a much better reason, money lots and lots of money. Remove that from the equation and what is the draw for a young teenager to enter the criminal world in the first place?
Liquor isn't free, and....yes, I go to a neighboring state to save almost 9 percent. Free is the key word. IF you could convince soceity to pay for all food and drugs, then this Utopian, legalized drug soceity could concieveably exist. Of course NO government can afford that. I'm a realist and tend to not waste much time dreaming of what can never be.
ML
I don't advocate FREE drugs just legalized drugs. Tax the shit out of em, much like cigarettes and booze, regulate them and let the dopers have at it. Even if the prices are equal to what the dopeman is selling it for why in the hell would you buy it from someone that might rip you off, sell you weak stuff, or shoot you when you can go to walgreens? Just like with the bootleggers, most people prefer to deal with legitimate businesses versus thugs and criminals if given the choice.
Drug TREATMENT on the other hand should be absolutely free and readily available. Use the profits from the drugs to pay for it and pocket the savings from no longer fighting the drug war.
As an added benefit we will no longer be turning casual users who are generally good tax paying members of society into criminals who eat up our tax dollars in Criminal University. Then when they get out have an extremely difficult time returning to their previous "good tax paying member of society" status. That is just plain retarded.
One of the biggest reasons this won't happen is because the police really really like the ability to take your stuff and keep it for themselves. The "drug war" is by far the largest source of that stuff.