RE: Did Ross Ulbricht Really Deserve a Double Life Sentence?
We're definitely on the same page. I must have misheard the $1 trillion figure, it was mentioned on a podcast that I was listening to about the drug war.
I'm not sure if we'd see an increase in drug usage with legalisation. It's already very easy to get your hands on them, so legalising them probably won't cause a big spike in usage. It's possible that you'd simply see a loss of interest in them since they'd become an accepted thing all of a sudden.
I actually find it interesting that governments aren't more interested in legalising them, think of the taxes they could earn! The Australian government takes huge taxes from alcohol sales, beer and wine in Australia is insanely expensive as a result.
I would guess that through legalisation, the problems we see would be reduced. There would be more created for sure, but the cost to our nations would be substantially less.
It is a complex topic, but for what it costs I'm amazed that the US and Australia aren't doing more to solve these problems.
In my opinion, I think there would be a slight increase in usage mainly because of the media coverage there would be around illict drugs being legalised, after a while I think it would eventually be stabilisation. If the illict drugs were legalised than they would have to cut down on law enforcement since there wouldn't be as much crime going on anymore. 'Drug dealers' would be turned into business man, and layed off law enforced would be able to find jobs in a new market because they most likely have a good deal of knowledge about the substances and on top of that medical professionals would be able to do proper research.
There would definitely be a cut in costs regardless of the outcome. And at the end of the day it should be the individuals choice as to what they do with their body.