NOT A SIMPLE QUESTION TO ANSWER

I learned last week that using marijuana in Great Britain is no longer the
crime that it used to be. The ruling allows law enforcement to concentrate
their efforts on catching hardcore drug traffickers. But why are drugs
illegal anyway?

It may seem like an elementary question -- until you try and answer it. My
first thought is to say, because it's against the law. But that doesn't
answer it. Why is drug use against the law? If someone wants to fry his/her
brain on cocaine, what's it to me? Should I care that another heroine
addict just overdosed?

Is that why drugs are illegal?

Because we should care? Is it because we're afraid that some hyped up
junkie will go on a shooting rampage?

You don't see that making the nightly news. A quick check on a couple of
Internet sites, including "History of American Drug Laws," helps answer the
question: Why are drugs illegal? I learned that the use of morphine, an
opium derivative, was used to ease soldiers' pain during the Civil War.
Opiates were also sold widely as medicines or elixirs. In 1906 the Pure
Food and Drug Act required medicines containing opiates to be labeled
accordingly. The Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 further expanded
restrictions, making it almost impossible for opiate addicts to buy drugs
illegally.

A doctor's prescription was required to obtain opium and coca products,
almost eliminating recreational use. The Harrison Act enacted an excise tax
on drug use, so enforcement was handled through the Narcotics Division of
the Treasury Department. The Division reported in 1919 that drug use was
increasing. The first marijuana ban came from Louisana in 1927 and by 1937,
46 out of 48 states also banned it. The Marijuana Act of 1937 outlawed the
possession or sale of the drug. The Boggs Act of 1951 and the Narcotics Act
of 1956 tightened up penalties for drug trafficking. The ball kept rolling
through the '60s and '70s and the drug war was on. Banning alcohol use failed.

Too many people imbibed.

Only a few succumbed to the "disease" of alcoholism, so it was not seen as
the plague that drug use was. Nicotine, arguably the most addictive
substance in distribution today, has also lasted. So that's the real answer
to: Why are drugs illegal?

Some people decided that doing drugs wasn't the "thing" to do. It's okay to
saturate your liver and maybe kill a person or two driving drunk, and it's
okay to blow chemical-laden smoke from cigarettes at others.

But by no means should you take it upon yourself to bake marijuana into
brownies or sniff cocaine to calm your nerves. Why no one compares drunk
driving to driving while doping is crazy.

If we make one mind-altering substance illegal, why don't we make them all
illegal? The problem with the drug war is that it's no longer a war. The
drug manufacturers have won. We have to ask ourselves: Would we have less
crime if drugs were legalized?

If drugs were sold at the corner store, next to Jack Daniels and vodka, and
taxed accordingly, law enforcement could focus on serious crimes: murder,
rape, child abuse, theft. Think about it this way. Some people are paying
more than $6 a pack for cigarettes and go through three packs a day. That's
$18 a day, $126 a week, $504 a month, and $6,552 a year. Multiply that by
the millions of smokers in America and you can see why tobacco is a big
revenue product. No one can make an alcoholic stop drinking or a nicotine
addict stop smoking.

They like it. Other drugs should be no different. Only when it encroaches
on another person's ability to live a good life should government step in
and take action.

And laws could be enacted to handle those situations. The slap on the
wrists that drunk drivers get is an example (inadequate but there). What
people do to themselves should be their own business.