Ms. Emmilene --

You wrote:

>
> > [Drug violence and gang wars] would very suddenly
> > disappear if drugs were legal, and were thus cheap, pure,
> > and safe.  (That would mean acknowledging every man's
> > right to his own life, though, and we surely can't do
> > that!)
>
> There are a few drawbacks to that thinking.  Drugs are
> addicting. Children who have a penchant for trying out
> anything and everything are hooked immediately.

That is happening already.  The War on Drugs serves only to make it more exciting, to make it a rebellious adventure of enormous appeal and clout to today's teenagers.  Before the War on Drugs, many narcotics could be bought over-the-counter, and it wasn't a problem because the legality removed the rebellious thrill that teenagers seek.  Have you noticed how youth alcohol use drops off after attaining legal age?

Not only that, but the War on Drugs has made drug sales so fantastically profitable that there is now a gigantic drug black-market that has every interest in promoting drug use among youth.  Drug dealers encourage drug use, and they have every incentive to do so.  Were drugs legal and cheap, they would return to their previous status of "interesting but dangerous".

The core issue here is responsibility for guiding a child's decisions.  Be it drugs or guns or cigarettes or drain-cleaner or power tools, children must be 'world-proofed', simply because it is impossible to child-proof the world (as we are seeing in our second big prohibition attempt this century). What delicious irony that you, an advocate of the Christian version of morality, stand before us advocating government force as the only means to enforcing morality, and as the only means to raising children correctly.  It is by the very same justification that we have so many gun-control efforts today.

Your attempt to enact vice laws to destroy people (via prison) as punishment for destroying themselves is wrong on all these counts:

   
• The massive violence, both against individuals and against the Bill of Rights, required to wage the War on Drugs (or any other War on Freedom) is not -- and cannot be -- conducive to raising peaceful, independent children.  The War on Drugs teaches us that it is okay to use violence against others if one rationalizes that it is "for the victim's own good."  Under that rationalization, any atrocity can be justified, as the history of this century demonstrates.
• Freedom is the freedom to make bad decisions, so long as you do not force your decisions on others.  Your 'seat-belt laws' approach is nothing more than "slavery for their own good", which amounts to the statement "We are here to bash your brains in, to assist you in using them."
• Abrogating every person's own good judgment by forcing their decision via law discourages good judgment.  As economists have discovered, "controls necessitate further controls".  A policy of forcing people to stop thinking for themselves and instead turn to the thinking of the legislature produces, in the end, a mindless, anxiety-ridden herd that cannot make any decisions on its own.  (As a believer in obedience to a Divine Will, that's what you wanted, isn't it?)

> No matter how "cheap" they 'may' get ,  there still would be
> a price to them, what happens when the price is to high for
> some?  Government subsidy's for drug addiction?

> [rest of straw man snipped]
>
> Or do they revert to the tried and true method of stealing?
> Which in turn brings us right back to where we are now.

Besides, even if everyone who currently uses drugs kept on using them after legalization, the net cost would fall because the black market would disappear.  Thus, the total money spent on drugs would also fall, and so the total crime committed to procure drug money would fall.  Also, there will be innumerably fewer deaths from 'bad cuts' once legitimate pharmaceutical concerns resume manufacture of such.  I will be happy to see a "Johnson & Johnson Safe-T-Buzz autoinjector" on the shelves of Eckerds, not because I'd ever use it (I wouldn't), but because those who do use it will not be harmed by it any more than they have anticipated.

Most people don't know or remember that drive-by shootings began in the Alcohol Prohibition era as gangs fought over drug (alcohol) turf.  They went away after the repeal; now they're back...can you guess why?  Also, note that the inevitable violence of Alcohol Prohibition fueled the first significant gun-control efforts in America, and now the violence of Drug Prohibition is doing likewise.

> Does the prospect of a drug induced haze by citizens hooked
> on these available and legal drugs lend itself to the idea
> of a prosperous and vital people?  Or does it lend itself to
> a picture of a crippled society strung out on this wonderful
> legal poison?

The principle here is: You can't kill freedom without killing the free mind, and you can't kill the mind's freedom without killing the body.  Look around you and see.

> There is a moral and right duty to keep our society healthy
> and prosperous.

Altruism is always the last resort of the (would-be)tyrant who knows that since the mind cannot be controlled against it's owner's will, he needs an ethical system that teaches people that their own interests are wrong, and that only the interests of the State (the church, majority, collective, tribe, race, gang, God, etc.) are Good.  Only then will everyone obey the State -- out of duty, out of guilt.

As a republic, America is not Altruist.  The ethical system embodied in "the Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" is Egoism: the ethics of self-interest.  The 'pursuit of happiness' is self-interest, not a causeless, reason-less, mystical, sacrificial duty to others.  Nowhere in our constitution will you find any mention of your "you have a duty to sacrifice yourself to others for the common good" agenda, because Altruism is anti-liberty.  What 'pursuit of happiness' could there possibly be, I ask, when one is shackled with an unending duty to benefit others -- even those he despises?

You say every person has a duty to others.  Why?  Where does this duty come from?  What, in precise terms, does it consist of?  How can I owe this debt which I have not incurred? What proof is there for this mystical duty to the collective?

> Destroy the religion and destroy the moral attitudes is the
> goal of a socialist agenda.

You have done exactly the same thing except you did it about a spiritual value (the freedom to smoke a joint) which you want to destroy with the guns and prisons and bombs of the government.  Unfortunately, when you make freedom your enemy, you declare war on the mind, and the only way to win that war is to destroy the body.  Every drug offender currently rotting jail is testimony to this.

> Its a tried and true method used throughout the history of
> the world.  This country is unique in our Christian and
> constitutional government.  *I* am not about to throw those
> principles aside for the "live and let live" philopsophy of
> the morally degenerate.

If you really do doubt that Christianity is "live and let live", read Galatians.  It is Paul's epistle (letter) in which he berates the Galatians for adding a code of "recommended behaviors" to the original Christian doctrine.  It wasn't even a mandatory code, yet Paul stridently objects.  He reiterates the true doctrine of Christianity (i.e., a personal relationship with God) and then clarifies that adding any so-called 'moral guidance' to it makes it something other than Christianity.  You are trying to do exactly that.

Here is a passage from Paul's letter:

    3:1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before
        whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as
        crucified?
      2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by
        works of the law, or by hearing with faith?
      3 Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are
        you now ending with the flesh?
      4 Did you experience so many things in vain? --if it
        really is in vain.
      5 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works
        miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by
        hearing with faith?

About whether or not our constitution is "live and let live", I can say little to anyone who holds this view except to refer them to the Bill of Rights.  There is only one alternative to "live and let live": "live and enslave".  Which do you advocate?