Gatemouth wrote a piece recently, which included this posting: Black America Without A War On Drugs - an interesting piece in and of itself.

The author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, mentions the possible downsides to a blanket legalization of all drugs.

There are two issues to address:

First, the idea of "legal" drugs. It's okay to ingest pharmaceuticals; yet, natural substances are shunned...why? Let's be sure that we aren't taking on a much bigger bear. Hasn't the Oxycontin/"Hillbilly Heroin" addiction gotten out of hand?

Second...I think that we are all aware that the "War On Drugs" is instead a war against Americans, and Black Americans more so than others.  Gary Webb proved that elements of our government played a part in destabilizing up-and-coming communities with the advent of drugs specifically designed to target said communities. Do a search for "Dark Alliance" if this is news to you.

Let's give our youth a little more credit, shall we?  Considering all that has been done to them, they still persevere.

Legalize drugs...and take away that black market profit margin.

In regards to the "downsides", I think that we have and are experiencing those downsides daily. Take away the markup...the danger now outweighs the benefits. Also, legalization takes away the inherent dangers of wayward drug production; namely, the substitution of fillers to replace certain elements...for instance, did you know that some maniacs were using cattle de-worming agents to cut cocaine?

This kind of insanity will end, once we end the nursemaiding of Americans so that pharmaceutical companies can reap unwarranted profits on crap that doesn't even perform as advertised.

More importantly, once drugs are no longer taboo, our youth will no longer use drugs as a venue of protest. It just won't be cool anymore to be a stoner.