Those around me actually have devoted careers to public health, and work full time helping victims of drug abuse, with very ruined lives. They all want the drug war to end, but none of them favors a free-for-all drug market. Wonder why that is?

And I wonder why they don't move for a return to beverage alcohol Prohibition. I further wonder if they realize that prison totally fucks up lives, and that drugs are rampant in prison.

People who ruin their lives with any addictive substance are "victims" of the human condition. Prohibition and prisons are the wrong answer to that. If your rehab friends and drug counselors cannot save me, then let me die in freedom destroying myself with [fill in heroin, crystal meth, crack or whatever], but do not lock me in a cage with violent predators. You have not the right.

Do you assume that the rehab and drug counselor people should be around to try to save you while you rant about how you hate what they do and think?

Never, not once, have I said such disparaging things about drug counselors. YOU invoked their purported views on drug policy as a reason not to end prohibition (or, as you put it, to allow a "free-fall" market in drugs).

No drug/alcohol counselor, btw, can save anyone. The individual addict decides for himself, perhaps with assist from a counselor, to quit. But some are going to destroy themselves no matter what, as I've seen in my own family -- yet I'm glad none had to spend time in prison.

Drug prohibition = prison. That is the reality. Prattling about Dickens makes no sense given that fact.

Are you ready to pay lower taxes to close down two thirds of the prisons in America?

Which is more expensive per person, prison or counseling?

You are implying that legalizing drugs other than alcohol will increase the addiction and overdose rate.

Please provide evidence for that claim

Right now, tomorrow, every American instead of first going to work, could stop at the superstore and buy vodka and Nyquil, and slurp both all day and night. Yet, while both substances are legal and mood-altering, the vast majority instead -- thus far, anyway -- go soberly to work. That there are alcohol, Nyquil and other sorts of addicts to both licit and illicit substances does not change the reality that most people would not choose to spend their lives enslaved to a substance, whether legal or not.

And whatever else is true, the prison-industrial complex that is larger in absolute and per capita terms in the U.S. than anywhere else in then world -- and HUGELY EXPENSIVE -- is driven by this sick insistence on imprisoning people for their use of, addiction to, or selling of illicit drugs.

In my state, non-violent offenders are remanded to treatment. They don't go to prison. That's the reality. It's the law.

And if they return to the criminal justice system a 2nd and 3rd time, then what? What if they are "dealers" who sold to their social newtork? How does the law treat them?

And does every pot smoker, or coke snorter, need tx? Even most?

What are you talking about? It is also illegal to drive stoned on any illicit substance. My point is that most people don't spend their days whacked out on legal mood-altering substances, any more than they would if the illicit ones were legal. Driving has nothing to do with my argument. The vast majority of folks go to work and get their kids to soccer practice, rather than guzzling vodka with shots of Nyquil.

Why do you suppose that is?

Part of the reason all those people choose not to go to work loaded on drink or nyquil or whatever is because realistically, they can't. They'll get in a wreck or lose their jobs or get arrested. That was my point. You're overstating your case.

With all due respect, no I am not. People who recklessly toke, snort, inject or drink whatever mood-altering substance, whether licit or illicit, are at risk of all the same consequences you identify. The legal status of the substance is immaterial to the choices the vast majority make not to risk those consequences.

And LMW: Yes, I had known Candy Lightner had come to disagree with MADD's agenda for the reasons you identify. Mission creep on, uh, sterioids.

No worry. I'm sure we agree more than not. It is just a difficult issue for me to think I detect any endorsement of putting people in prison for substance problems, and I know, as so many do not, that many users are under the law also dealers -- and dealers get absurdly draconian prison sentences.

(And if it matters, I'm not talking about myself. While I used some illicit drugs in the distant past, they never became a problem for me, as they did for others near and dear.)

I suggest you revisit this post I wrote at Glenn's old blog (under a pseudonym), and which included this with supporting links:

While the United States constitutes 5% of the world's population, this “land of the free” holds 25% of the world's prisoners – a third to a half are there for drug offenses .

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/03/prison-war-on-drugs-just-say-no.html

In addition to the Barbie pencils, I see McCain and the kewl kids all merrily singing that beloved pre-school ditty:

The wheels on the bus go round and round,

round and round,

round and round.

The wheels on the bus go round and round,

all through the town.

The wipers on the bus go Swish, swish, swish;

Swish, swish, swish;

Swish, swish, swish.

The wipers on the bus go Swish, swish, swish,

all through the town.

The horn on the bus goes Beep, beep, beep;

Beep, beep, beep;

Beep, beep, beep.

The horn on the bus goes Beep, beep, beep,

all through the town..

A good time being had by all -- on the bus.