Anybody (or Radley) have suggestions on some sources to read further on this issue?

Why yes, yes I do. Glenn Greenwald for Cato. Be sure to download the full report.

Drug Decriminalization in Portugal:
Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080

“In this new (and theoretical) state…”

That isn’t really so. Sears (and other merchants) sold Cocaine, Heroine and products containing opiates well into the 20th century. Marijuana wasn’t outlawed federally until the late 1930′s. Methamphetamine was manufactured and sold legally well into the 60′s. It’s not as if 2010 drug laws have existed throughout history.

And the sad thing is that our government will gladly put her BIL in prison, or in the ground, along with his innocent next door neighbor if necessary, but they will not put him in treatment. That is our mentality. Kill or imprison. That is the best our leadership can do.

No invective friend. Notice how nobody is killing anybody over who gets to sell Budweiser in the neighborhood? If you banned alcohol, the price would shoot up and then people would be willing to kill over who gets to sell it. The potential profits would be so great that even people in other countries would be willing to kill over the right to sell it to America.

Right now our government is ready to kill or let be killed countless innocents at home and abroad in order to deny people here the opportunity to make the wrong decision about drugs. That would be wrong even if did keep all Americans off drugs. But, as you point out, it does not. Like all aspects of the drug war, it is a 100% failure.

Since we can’t stop the drugs, wouldn’t we be better people if we stopped the violence?

There is already a large movement in the universal HC crowd trying to eradicate tobacco use because of its high cost associated with healthcare. I don’t see contemporary liberals pushing for drug legalization and universal healthcare in the future.

A scary thought, the drug warriors pushing for universal coverage as a strategy to convince more Americans to hate drugs since they’ll have to pay for treatment.

Maybe my conspiracy theory mind is getting the better of me.

You recognize that we have legal substances (alcohol, tobacco) that are intoxicants. You also recognize that with the consumption of intoxicants, there are harmful side effects including addiction. We have many addicts to legal intoxicants. I would argue that from a public health perspective we manage fairly well with treatment for those that want or need it, but in the end, treatment and cessation of use still comes down to individual choice. If you want to quit using, you have to choose to, and there are medical and psychological resources that can help you overcome addiction.

So the challenge is, why is addiction to some substances treated solely as a medical problem whereas addiction to other substances treated partially as a criminal problem? Why couldn’t we handle addiction to any substance as an issue of personal choice to stop using?

As for the issue of physical harm caused by the substances themselves, you’ll find that cocaine and heroin are probably about as safe as alcohol. Used within proper limits, overdose risk is rare. In a legal regime, you’d have pure dope with known strength and predictable results. Even after narcotics were made illegal around the turn of the last century, the Bureau of Narcotics in the US provided maintenance cocaine and morphine to elite addicts, including US Congressmen, doctors, and other “men of repute.”

For long term heroin (aka diacetyl morphine – not different from morphine at all once it crosses the blood-brain barrier) addicts the main side effect is constipation. Things like sepsis, collapsed veins and secondary infections are a result of prohibition and lack of access to proper injection equipment, not the substance itself. The classic “Hollywood” heroin overdose case where the person dies quickly is usually a result of combining heroin with alcohol and/or barbituates. The combination of the two can and will depress heart function rapidly. Taken by itself, a heroin overdose should take 6-12 hours minimum to kill you, and can easily be overcome by an injection of Naloxone. Again, this is a medical, not a legal problem and should be addressed as such.

Lastly, it’s been said that in a legal drug regime, there is no profit margin for criminal enterprises because the drugs will be cheaper than they are under a prohibition regime. Addicts under this system wouldn’t have to resort to crimes to get their fix.

Oh, and not a libertarian perspective (but from what Zero’s said, he/she is not a libertarian), but treatment on demand (government provided) is much cheaper than interdiction and incarceration.

As distasteful as it is to think about society being forced to pay for addicts, there’s a couple of things to consider here. First, despite the propaganda to the contrary, not every user, even users of “hard” drugs like cocaine and heroin, is an addict or will become an addict. Second, why are we so worried about this cost when we already throw billions upon billions of dollars at prisons, police, public-hysteria campaigns, and international interdiction, not to mention the incredible burden this war puts on our criminal justice system? In Switzerland, Holland, Portugal, and for a short time, England, they have all discovered that treatment is a far less costly option than incarceration.
I am actually against socialized treatment for addicts. I think that without the police spending all their time trying to bust teenage potheads and playing whack-a-mole with drug gangs, and without the courts wasting their resources on this futile pursuit, the really bad addicts could be dealt with pretty effectively and swiftly by targeting police resources on car-break-ins, muggings, shoplifting, etc. Without the prisons being stuffed to the gills with random drug users, we could actually keep the real criminals in prison for the actual term of their sentences. The important distinction here is that by focusing police resources on crimes where there is a tangible victim who has a vested interest in making the crime known to authorities, you are going to have a higher success rate and focus your attention on the users who are causing actual measurable harm to society. Anyone who can use without directly violating others’ rights to life, liberty and property should be left alone. Not to mention, this method doesn’t imperil our civil rights to nearly the degree that the drug war does, with it’s anonymous (often criminal) informants, undercover stings, no-knock raids, warrentless surveillance, and general stomping of the bill of rights. Also, to answer your question, there have been surveys asking Americans, “If drugs were legalized tomorrow, would you try them?” and the vast majority respond no, citing ethical, religious or personal reasons. Unfortunately, while most Americans answer no to these polls, they continue to believe that all their neighbors are answering yes.

#18
Should society pay for those who choose to get addicted to and ultimately ruin their own bodies?

No, but if we must, remember that about the most expensive death to die is a natural one, so I expect that, just like smokers, lifetime health care would be less expensive on average for a drug user than a non-drug user.

The monetary savings for disbanding the roving gangs of thugs that kidnap and murder them and anyone close to them is a bonus, too.

Tell me then, where in the Constitution is Congress given any authority to tell Americans what they can smoke, inhale, inject, swallow or otherwise put in their bodies? If we needed an amendment to ban alochol, then where is the amendment to bad all these other substances?