Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well given these are crimes against another person, rather than 'crimes' against oneself, that argument is a load of bollocks!
Where do we draw the line? Say you buy a drug that comes from a cartel that uses kidnapping, rape, and murder to hold their power. It is possible for the drug to have been produced safely, but it wasn't in this case and you are feeding the market. Is the government preventing the drug from being created relevant? What happens if, given a safe production option, those purchasing it do not do their due diligence in che…
Always a tough question :)
>> Say you buy a drug that comes from a cartel that uses kidnapping, rape, and murder to hold their power. It is possible for the drug to have been produced safely, but it wasn't in this case and you are feeding the market.
There are indeed lots of moral questions here. As someone who tends to buy things that are free-range, organic, fair trade etc. I fully agree that one cannot divorce the action of purchase from the background process. This is one (of many) reasons I'm not going to be buying any cocaine or heroin any time soon.
The argument put forward above is that stopping the war on drugs just because we can't win is equivalent to stopping the 'war' on (for example) burglary. Burglary by its very nature, in the commission of the act itself, creates victims. People whose house was broken into and whose stuff is gone. Drug taking does not create these victims in the act of taking drugs itself.
So I would argue that yes, the government preventing the drug from being created and sold openly is very relevant - it is the government regulations that support the extremely lucrative black market as well as the consumers. The cartels, the violence, they could not exist without our laws propping them up.
This is where the comparison with Burglary really breaks down - legalising burglary leads to a world where there is no deterrent to breaking in to someone's house and taking their stuff. A worse world, I hope you'll agree.
Legalising cocaine, for example, would make most of those horrible side-effects go away at the expense of (probably) increased drug-related healthcare costs in the developed world. I think that's a better place to be.
>> What happens if, given a safe production option, those purchasing it do not do their due diligence in checking the source.
What happens with, say, coffee? Some people choose ethical brands. One hopes that there are minimum standards of human rights applied to workers on any product coming in to the country (no slave labour, no blood-diamonds...), and AFAICT there are no coffee cartels using kidnap, rape or murder to protect their hold on the coffee market.