The legalisation of drugs

My first reaction to this is to legalise drugs that are currently outlawed. This is probably because I believe that anyone should be allowed by their government to do whatever they damn well want with their body. But thinking this through further, it's much more complicated than that.

There is the argument that drugs are no different to alcohol in the effects they have. You consume them, you go into an unstable mental state and you are much more likely to break laws. So you can see why governments want to keep them non-legal. However if this is the case, why not outlaw alcohol? It has the same effects but is a much larger problem because most people consume alcohol. Personally I'm not in favour of outlawing alcohol, but there is certainly flawed logic here.

When abused, drugs can have far more severe effects on the individual than alcohol can. It can destroy families more easily and it can seriously harm their mental state. One argument is that if drugs were made legal, the crimes people would be more likely to commit under the influence of drugs would still be illegal and therefore it would only be something very similar in its effects as alcohol that the government would be legalising. That makes sense.

However the main reason I am against the legalisation of drugs is that it would almost certainly increase crime. Yes, there have been studies and experiments in countries where drugs were legalised and the results were positive, but I think the effects in countries such as the USA and the UK would be completely different to Portugal. There are many more people who currently make vast amounts of money from selling drugs to people, and they would not like their exclusive products to suddenly become widely available, so crime could well increase.

Usually I take a very libertarian stance on issues like this, but in this case I can only see that legalising drugs in the UK would cause more trouble than good. I like living in a relatively safe and stable society. This would probably cause havoc and misery and cause vast amounts of violence and further crime.

Alternatively, some drugs are used for medicinal purposes and I am heavily in favour of drugs being legal for medicinal purposes. If a doctor knows that a particular thing will help his or her patient, why shouldn't he be allowed to give it to them? It's what doctors are for. Having said that, if drugs were legalised for medical purposes they would need to be under strict regulation and the patients using them would need to be checked on closely so that any signs of addiction could be detected before it could develop into a serious problem.