Are you claiming that the benefits that we actually get from the current prohibitions are greater than the costs of those prohibitions?
If so, that's not obviously true. After all, I can get all of those things without too much effort, so what is huge benefit of making them illegal?
If not, what definition of "socially irresponsible" are you using?
How are they clearly adverse? Why was it not clear before the middle of the 20th century? Why is it not clear in other countries? Why was alcohol "clearly adverse" in the early 20th century in the US? What's the evidence that making drugs illegal has net benefits to society?
It is very, very expensive and unhealthy to lock up so many young people for drug offenses. Illegal drugs do a lot of harm, but so do alcohol, cigarettes and obesity. If narcotics were legal, we would sadly continue to lose good people to them. But the evidence from Portugal* suggests this would be not more than we already do. And we would lose far fewer people to prison, drug-related violence and the accidents and diseases due to the conditions associated with illegal drugs.
* http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.ht...
(edit: spelling and added link to article about Portugal's policy experiment)
And they are adverse because they are unhealthy for consumption. That a prison is unhealthy says more about the American prison system than the comparative health of narcotics.
There are a lot of responses I can't cover individually, so here is a thought experiment to extrapolate the restriction and legality issue further: why regulate anything? Why restrict anything? We can viably allow murder and rape to exist as well if gun laws have no regulation - every one is responsible for themselves, and forget the rest.
So. Would you choose to restart Prohibition if it were up to you?
(Edit)
To clarify, alcohol does not need vehicular accidents to kill, it does cause damage to the liver, but my basic point was that while there are substances that are legal which are harmful, such as nicotine and alcohol, these are far and away much less harmful than other illegal controlled substances which have more overdose potential.
You are entirely deluded.
Heroin (and alcohol) also cause psychosis, which is probably the biggest cause for things such as spousal murder. Legalization is a weak argument when the only evidence is "It worked for Portugal!" or "If we take away the criminal organizations then everything will be well!". Instead of fighting the infinite number of criminals I'd rather we help the dudes who fucked up and now want to make their lives better.
You realize that is exactly what Portugal is doing, right?
And to most other parts of the body
Sure, alcohol is far less harmful than some of the illegal controlled substances. Still, there are other illegal substances which are less harmful than alcohol. It's not like ethanol is the safest drug out there.
According to CDC data from 2001-2005, an avg of 20 thousand people died from directly alcohol related diseases (with an additional 16 thousand of conditions linked to excessive drinking), compared to 14 thousand who died in motor-vehicle accidents.
Like rocks, thumbtacks, shampoo, too much aspirin, bacon-double-cheeseburgers and daytime TV. We do not ban everything that's unhealthy. The question is whether, on balance, the benefits of prohibition are greater than the costs. I think we agree on that, though we might disagree when we estimate the balance when it comes to narcotics. Unfortunately, statistics for both sides are limited. This scarcity of data makes the Portugese experience really valuable.
We can know the cost of imprisoning all these people though. The US has the highest imprisonment rate in the world: 738 per 100,000. The UK, which has similar societal attitudes to drugs, though very different judicial policies, has 148 per 100,000, which is still above the median globally. US taxpayers are spending too much money on food, lodging and security for drug offenders.
Imprisonment data:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/downloads/worl...
edit: in case you think the cultural differences with the UK make the comparison poor, Canada has 107 prisoners per 100,000 population. That's one seventh the rate of their neighbor.
Is your argument that it's better to choose the greater of two evils?
Certain narcotics are very clearly adverse because they are extremely addictive with very very small amount of use. You argue against "clearly adverse narcotics", does that mean you think it is responsible to make all narcotics legal? Should people be able to get heroin as easily as they get cigarettes, never mind the kids who would easily be able to go get some dude to buy them a hit of heroin or meth.
One mistake run with heroin or meth can fuck your life up for good, no matter what kind of person you are. Proper education and good life styles are a much more effective defense against drugs then legalization.
You've said that - I'm asking how you're defining "socially irresponsible".
> I don't think a society will function as well with a government making clearly adverse narcotics freely available because people want them.
Not banning something is not the same as "govt making available".
More to the point, those drugs are freely available despite all the laws.
I'll ask again. What benefits do we actually get from the drug laws? If you mention availability, you get to show that the laws actually affect it because if they don't, that's not a benefit. Since they are freely available, that's a tough argument to make.
Then you get to explain why the benefits that we actually get are worth the very significant costs that we pay.
I note that beer distributors don't kill folks over territory.