Why Are Drugs STILL Illegal?

Question by : Why are drugs STILL illegal?
Prohibition of drugs does not deter active drug users, has no consequence on addiction, strengthens crime, reinforces ignorance (by having legal drugs like cigarettes and alcohol be more harmful than say marijuanna), and weakens respect for law among educated people by virtue of their awareness into the nonsensical nature of these hypocritical laws.
In addition to this you have the problem of seeing how it is the governments business to control what people do to affect their consciousness. The arguement that drugs are illegal because they lead to crime is one an ignorant person would make, and all you have to do is look at the prohibition of alcohol to see why it is because of prohibition that crime is correlated with drug use/selling. So why are they STILL illegal? My guess would be ongoing ignorance and the society at large willing to get their information handed down to them, versus actively seeking to make sense out of the policies that tell us what we are allowed to do by educating themselves.
I will address some points made here thus far. Does me labelling individuals given the aforementioned criteria as ignorant stand as the reason for why these hypocritical laws remain illegal? In response to “Quizzard”, the answer is obviously no. I mean no offence by labelling people as ignorant as I am describing them based on the fact that the general public truly is not well informed on this issue. I never said “stupid” so make sure you read and understand correctly.
In response to “Casey” showing the deleterious effects of people who have abused one drug misses the arguement altogether, so widen your approach when discussing this topic to reflect the greater point. Additionally, your reference to criminals doing any number of criminal activities in pursuit of a drug is due to a number of factors including addiction (to those drugs that are addictive, and socio-economic factors) and your failure to recognize this within your own example perhaps points to your ignorance yes.
“Leon Krahe” does a good job of explaining the problem and a number of other readers, I think, have good points.

Stigma is a huge issue with drug use and the illegality of a drug does not correlate with its level of toxicity or physical harm. Stigma feeds off of ignorance either willful or not.

I personally think education not prohibition or “know” versus “no” is the enlightened path, but you have to cut through all of the work that has been, and continues to be, done to perpetuate the stigma that “Leon Krahe” mentioned.

Best answer:

Answer by Fred F
Aspirin is still legal.

Give your answer to this question below!