DRUGS!?!

Individual freedom is necessarily tied to the ability to make bad decisions such as drug use. I do not argue that the War on Drugs needs to be stopped because it isn't working or because it is too expensive, because nothing is "too expensive" if it combats a social ill and regardless of what people might say the War on Drugs is working because if drugs were legal there would be a whole hell of a lot more drug use. I argue against the War on Drugs because either both Civil Liberty and Drug Use need to be assaulted or both need to be preserved (the one is inextricably linked to the other), and I would rather live in a free society full of addicts than a controlled society that is Drug Free. America currently has the highest prison population, percentage-wise, of the globe (including Russia and China), and 40% of those prisoners are behind bars for non-violent marijuana-related offenses. Marijuana, meanwhile, is a relatively benign herbal narcotic that has different, but not more potent, effects than alcohol or tobacco. Because marijuana use is illegal, the people who do use it are generally seen as negative social elements and generally use the drug irresponsibly (they're already being "irresponsible" by breaking the law, so what's to keep them from abusing the drug - if they're going to risk going behind bars for it, they might as well get their money's worth, right?) and therefore become addicted. If marijuana use were legalized, it would become like alcohol or tobacco - certainly, it would be used much more widely, but that doesn't mean that everone who used it would become an anti-social pothead. 95% of its use would be benign, social, and non-extreme, just like with alcohol and tobacco. An added bonus - and an argument that speaks more directly to American materialism - would be that the government would be making billions of dollars off marijuana taxation instead of spending billions of dollars to combat its use. All those billions of dollars could be put to use fighting drug use through clinics and drug education (which is much cheaper than imprisonment and police control) and funding progressive institutions such as education and welfare. The reason why most Americans still favor the War on Drugs is because America has become a materialistic society that values tangible goods that relate to physical welfare (such as lower drug use) much higher than abstract goods (such as freedom).