Liberals: Legalize drugs, tax it, get less of it. Do you agree?

Liberal dogma says :

"We need to legalize drugs. Then we tax it. And we will get less of it."

So if you tax drugs and get less of it. Doesn't it stand to reason that if you tax business you get less business?

 

Liberals say if you tax it, you can fund treatment, which is why you get less drug abuse.

I don't understand how if I have a opportunity to make money, losing part of that money to taxes, removes my incentive to make any money at all?

Where is the logic here?

 

That's a (*)(*)(*)(*) poor recitation of what a right-winger thinks is "librul dogma." Try again.

 

I disagree

 

This is actually a libertarian point of view stolen by "liberals" much like their name. But who cares about taxation? Simple legalization would save huge costs from investigating and incarcerating drug crimes. Violence would also drop significantly. Distributors would then be able to utilize civil courts to settle disputes, and police officers would be freed up to pursue more heinous crimes. As far as any moral outcome... The state has NO right to tell an individual what he should do with HIS/HER own body. Obviously this would put the responsibility back on the said individual, but isn't that what America is about anyway, Freedom and the Responsibility that comes with it?

 

That's not usually the argument for legalizing drugs and then taxing them.

Legalization is for the purpose of removing the criminal elements associated with a contraband market.

Taxation is for funding things like rehab efforts.

Even decriminalization of drugs has been shown to have virtually no effect on the usage of them. Portugal's decriminalization policy has resulted in about the same amount of drug use as before it, but drug-related crimes have gone way down.

Legalization would be similar in effects. About the same amount of people would smoke a joint if it was legal as those who currently do while it's not.

Taxation would have little effect on use unless it was a really high tax, but even in that case, that would encourage the development of an illegal market to undercut the legal one.

That being said, more taxes don't necessarily mean less business, but it all depends on how the taxes are applied.