First I'm glad that you seemed to have taken some things on board and perhaps done a little more research and I think you make some better points this time round Secondly I am not aroused by Cenk.

I am however annoyed by people who make wild claims with no real evidence, actually worse than that using evidence that disproves what they are saying you can't expect me not to call you out on that.

The first link you posted wasn't a right wingish website it was, if anything, left wing but it mainly seemed to archive statistics and pulications as well as peoples posted opinions. And most importantly government documents (the ones you quoted) which are clearly marked underneath it as saying they are obvious propoganda and contain complete innacuracies. It's just ironic that the source you use to prove you point says clearly underneath it that it is Government Propoganda.

I'm sad to see that you're still trying to link child molestors in with drug abusers. Now your point seems to be they are both addicts they can't control themselves they know it's wrong but they still do it. Ok you're right they are both addictions and that would be a fair comparison but that's not the comparison you were making. You were making the claim that legalizing one is the same as legalizing the other which is bonkers.

People get addicted to all sorts of things, video games, chocolate, shopping they know they shouldn't do it but they can't help themeselves does that mean they are on the same level as child molestors? The main point was and it still is that child molestors, rapists have an addiction that inherently harms someone else where as drug addicts have an addiction that inherently harms themselves. I'm sure you can drag up a few cases where someone else has been harmed by someone's drug abuse but they are few and far between (not to mention the fact I could bring up cases of people's addictions to things such as shopping leading to people being killed) so It's not a valid argument.

I don't think anyone believes that legalizing drugs is going to completely solve the problem. And I would agree with you that there is perhaps not enough data to make a final conclusion on whether legalizing drugs reduces the number of drug users and there are various factors to take into account with the situations of different countries and all sorts of things. However all evidence so far points to similar numbers or lower in a lot of cases and not to mention you'll be hard pressed to find statistics were the US comes out favourably in drug usage. Now you were wondering about costs well lets look at that,

http://www.drugsense.org/wo dclock.htm

This website states that in 2003 $19 billion was spent by federal government and a further $30 billion was spent by state and local government totalling $49 billion and apparently that number has only got larger.

Most of that cost is on enforcing drug laws and incarceration if we decriminalized drugs that cost would disappear.

Not to mention the government could tax drugs providing a completely new revenue stream like they get from taxing cigarettes and alcohol.

As for it becoming more acceptable there are a lot of places where there is a stigma associated with people who smoke cigarettes and most people who smoke want to get help to quit. And it's a lot easier for them to get that help because there are so many places that they can get that help, quite often places that are supported by the government. The negative properties of drugs will never change whether you change the law or not, and if people are educated properly on the effects of drugs (good and bad) then they will be able to make an informed decision. The best way you can make someone curious about something is to tell them not to do it, I mean that's just human nature. So in summary and I'm sorry my replies have been so long so well done if you read it all,

Decriminalizing drugs would,

Save money (in the region of $49b) and even create a new source of money for the government. So on the money front decriminalizing is a clear winner.

Get rid of drug cartels (An increasingly signnificant problem)

Drug use would either go down or stay very similar which could be argued isn't really a categorical win for decrimanlizing drugs but at the same time even if drug use stays the same then the other two advantages make it obvious which is the best course of action.

Oh also one other thing would be that if drugs were de-criminalized then the government could put warnings on them (as with cigarettes) you can bet dealers don't care about telling first time drug users about the negative effects. And final thought on the same track is that a lot of drugs obtained illegaly have spurious contents mixed in with them, rat poison for example or irregular doses the government would be able to erradicate this problem which quite often leads to unintentional overdoses or poisoning.

 Phew!