I've always been in favor of legalization. I feel the amount of money spent in an effort to stop the flow of drugs, at least to the US, is ridiculous. I'm talking from the initial efforts to prevent it getting here in specialized forces, all the way down to the overcrowding in the prison system to deal with people caught with a fairly small amount on themselves.
I saw a video for this organization before:
http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php
Basically, it's people from law enforcement, current and past, for the legalization of drugs. One of the things that I found hit home the most for me was their comparison of drugs to cigarettes. Basically what they were saying is that education is the primary way to get people to give up their drug, whatever it may be. Over the past couple of decades the number of people quitting smoking has been increasing greatly due to a better understanding of the negative effects cigarettes cause.
What they said was that instead of trying to force people to quit by making them criminals, it would be more effective to educate them, so that they choose to quit on their own. There will always be people that use drugs, like there will always be people that smoke, or drink. But I personally feel that drugs, if legalized can be much more easily controlled, (The tax income from it wouldn't be that bad either!) But basically, if the drugs are illegal there is no real method to look into the long-term, and short-term negative impacts drugs have on people, therefore it is difficult to really educate people about the reasons to not use them.
In terms of it ending the violence and whatnot, I don't really buy into that, the drug dealers now are really just people that prey on others, they will find something else to prey on if the drugs are legalized, I just think that legalizing the drugs will have more of a positive impact then the current method, let's face it, if it hasn't worked for the past few decades we have to admit that the war on drugs is a failed war, and look into other methods to curtail drug use.
More on my comparison of cigarettes to drugs:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96950224
That shows that since smoking has been looked at negatively, and education, and studies of the negative effects have been looked into there has been a drop in the number of people that smoke. I saw Alci mention that more people will try drugs due to peer pressure, and the ease at which it can be attained, cigarettes though are the same way, most people try due to peer pressure, or seeing family doing it. They're easy to get, at least in the US. But, as education has increased on the subject the number of people smoking has slowly declined, and continues to decline.
I don't really believe that legalizing it will make it any easier for people to get it, as it is now I imagine that most people here either know someone, or know someone thats knows someone that deals drugs.
