My name is Lewis Voyles; I live near Detroit, MI. I'm a simple man with simple ideas. Why can't politicians figure this out?
  I believe that drugs are bad. I believe the drug war is worse. Legal drugs would create a legal market. The black market for them would cease to exist. The violent crime that partners with the illegal distribution would cease to exist. Our drug laws invite crime. People are gonna use drugs; just as people are gonna drink, but alcohol is regulated and taxed. The government has a modicum of control of booze, but no control over drugs.
A black market doesn't care if it sells in the ghetto or the schoolyard. It is far easier for a teenager to get weed, coke, meth, or X than alcohol, even beer. A legal market would put drugs in the hands of adults and out of the hands of our children.
   A legal market would give the government FDA oversight to dangerous substances and open the door to medicinal study. Our Government is made up of lawyers; decisions about what we put into are bodies is best left to doctors (after ourselves, of course).
   Finally, the golden goose, taxes can be put on drugs. Taxes that could be used for education, highways, alternative fuel reaserch, or even, god forbid, National Health Care! Tens of thousands of law enforcement types could be diverted to catching violent criminals. The DEA could start chasing TERRORISTS; they're already set up for the kind of defense that would secure the Homeland.
   I'm no lawyer, but it doesn't seem too difficult to understand. Drugs are ruinng this country a lot slower than the drug war.