It seemed like a good idea at the time

America needs to seriously consider legalizing all drugs. It needs to consider it for five minutes then just do it.

Nothing is gained by making narcotics illegal. The number of people who refrain from using them because they're illegal has to be tiny (and even among those people most would try pot or coke at most, not hardcore drugs if they were legal). The one issue I foresee is people driving while doing legalized drugs. I have to wonder, though, just how many people are doing that now anyway. I doubt worker productivity would go down at all (also, most businesses would still be allowed to prohibit drug use if they wanted, they'd just have a smaller pool of workers to draw from if they wanted to make pot verbotem at their work).

Here is what is gained by making drugs illegal (not just this paragraph, I'm assuming I'll need more): Mexico, Columbia, Afghanistan and others get to stop being failed states. Two of those countries are locked in a brutal civil war between two factions: the governments and the cartels (though the governments are rarely anything more than just glorified cartels). Removing the billions that Americans ship there for the illegal drugs would cripple these people. Afghanistan would certainly be better off if farmers didn't have to worry that American helicopters were coming to burn down their poppy fields every time they heard an American chopper. Who cares if that's the only crop they can grow there? If its really that good, maybe Afghanistan will become to opiates what Russia is to vodka.

The American police could go back to be a police force instead of a paramilitary unit. Have you seen police forces recently? They all have body armor that would make Robocop jealous. And they cops up in Philly are practically at war with the drug dealers, and its not really clear who is winning. If you can walk into any local store and buy drugs, the drug empires crumble. Just as prohibition made the Mafia the powerhouse that it was, drugs make the modern criminal empires function (they also put the Mafia on life support when the liquor money dried up). These people will be put out of business by corporations so fast it'll make their heads spin.

American's get their civil liberties back. Most of the roll back on civil liberties (thanks to the Burger, Rehnquist and Roberts courts) have been because of drug related cases. Thanks to drugs, the police can pull you over in your car, arrest you, put you in the back of their police car, and search your car (trunk and locked glove box included) all to "protect the safety of the officer" (read: to find drugs). If they don't need to find drugs, we might actually give our civil liberties back (I say might because we're still in the early stages of the Roberts courts).

American farmers get to grow crops people actually want. You don't think American farmers would jump at the chance to grow new cash crops? I'm sure tabacco farmers would love to have something to replace their ever shrinking crop. Also, this could mean the end of having to pay subsides to farmers to cut back on food production since this plan could see them making money.

The tax revenue would be awesome and considering the amount of money this move will save us, Republicans will cum in their pants when they see the numbers. We'll be going from spending billions to stop something from happening to making billions taxing it. We're already paying for the results of drug addiction, why not profit off it too? (that may be a little callous, but I'm ok with that)

Any other problems or suggestions can be left in the comments.