Truth: The drug war causes the crime.
Few drug users hurt or rob people because they are high. Most of the crime occurs because the drugs are illegal and available only through a black market. Drug sellers arm themselves and form gangs because they cannot ask the police to protect their persons and property.
In turn, some buyers steal to pay the high black-market prices. The government says heroin, cocaine and nicotine are similarly addictive, and about half the people who both smoke cigarettes and use cocaine say smoking is at least as strong an urge. But no one robs convenience stores for Marlboros.
Alcohol prohibition created Al Capone and the Mafia. Drug prohibition is worse. It's corrupting whole countries and financing terrorism.
The Post wrote, "Stossel admitted his own 22-year-old daughter doesn't think [legalization] is a good idea."
But that's not what she said. My daughter argued that legal cocaine would probably lead to more cocaine use. And therefore probably abuse.
I'm not so sure.
Banning drugs certainly hasn't kept young people from getting them. We can't even keep these drugs out of prisons. How do we expect to keep them out of America?
But let's assume my daughter is right, that legalization would lead to more experimentation and more addiction. I still say: Legal is better.
While drugs harm many, the drug war's black market harms more.
And most importantly, in a free country, adults should have the right to harm themselves.