I think our greatest problem when it comes to drugs is we treat it as a criminal issue. Just having drugs in your possession is treated as a criminal offense. You go to court and jail time is a very real possibility.

Yet users are almost never causing violence nor hurting anyone other than themseves consciously.

The justifications for making most illegal drugs illegal is the health effects. The violence comes directly from getting the supply to the user illegally and for a profit-if drugs were not illegal then the guns and the deaths would rapidly vanish.

Yes, driving or operating machinery while under the influence of drugs or alcohol should remain illegal and should carry a penalty-but not simply being a user. People use drugs initially to escape an unhappy existence and then often because they cant experience happiness without them. THAT is addiction. The drug becomes an appettite as opposed to an occassional recreation.

Its time to treat drug addiction as a health issue and to recognize the financial waste of fighting a war on drugs. The money put into fighting addiction and dependency will be far better spent.

You're on to something. Our prisons are full of individuals who are not only addicts, but also suffering from mental illness. And rather than getting them treatment, we lock them up. Addiction is a health issue and there is in most cases a mental illness component as well. Many addicts start off self-medicating depression or other mental illnesses. No one is addressing that connection. Instead Congress is renaming addiciton and investigating Baseball's steroid use. Why aren't they putting money toward effective mental health and addiction treatment programs? Why are they wasting money on a war on drugs that doesn't do any good but fill up prisons with people busted for pot possession?

Interesting point - and one that has been, as is being, addressed aggresively by the criminal justice system in most states (including mine, the usually behind-the-times South Carolina). Inovative programs such as drug court (referenced in the article - you both should really research this program), mental health court, PTI, and general changes to the probation system are seeking ways to better understand and deal with repeat non-violent drug offenders (relying less and less on the "just lock 'em up" approach and focusing more on attacking the problem of addiction through treatment).

But a vital point is being overlooked by you both - you can't help a person that doesn't want to be helped, a person that doesn't choose to change - and just sighing and saying "oh why can't society understand that he has a disease and is not a criminal!?!" is really not going to solve anything when it's your stuff he's stealing, or your niece or nephew he's neglecting, or, god forbid, your body he's pointing a gun or knife at.

I can't help but suspect that you two have had very little direct experience with the criminal justice system. Two blatantly erroneous statements reveal this:

1. "Yet users are almost never causing violence nor hurting anyone other than themseves consciously" - as a criminal prosecutor, I could rail against this complete hogwash for days, but I'll spare you the long version. Users often physically hurt people for money, users often steal from their families, users often neglect or abandon their children, users often steal from friends and strangers alike. A severe drug addict (and that's who we're talking about here, not your friend "Bear" you met at Bonaroo who smokes a little too much pot and once spent the night in jail, thanks to those mean police officers) hurts almost every single person they come in contact with - be it financially, emotionally, and, yes, often physically.

2."Why are they wasting money on a war on drugs that doesn't do any good but fill up prisons with people busted for pot possession?" - what an unbelieveably phony statement, I challenge you to find ONE person serving a substantial prison sentence (not just being held over night in lock up) for possessing less than 1 ounce of marijuana. Taken farther - find one person serving a substantial prison sentence for less than 10 ounces, who didn't already have a substantial prior criminal record.

My point is - the system is seriously flawed, but it's trying. In many of both of your hypothetical imagined criminal cases, what you really believe (right down your politically biased core) happens to criminal defendants ("carted away for 10 years just for smokin' a little weed") is way off the base of reality. Drug offenders are given chance, after chance, after chance, after chance, in our legal system. Liberals (which I count myself as one, I might add) often are very adept at correctly pointing out the stereotype-based rationales and closed minds of the right, but just as often overlook their own completely world-view driven delusions. As libs, we are often far too quick to label the average drug addict as an "oppressed sick person who can't help it" and far too slow to acknowledge the very real human consequences of these people's actions, actions they CHOOSE to carry out - addiction or not (and spare me the philisophical diatribes on "free will", Sartre). While we should try our best to understand the science and treatment of drug addiction and how best to fix it - dismissing the criminal offenses of addicts as the unchangable side effects of a "disease" is utterly naive.

This is quite funny, actually. Coccougs, as a prosecutor, naturally prefers the criminal justice approach. I, as a physician, see a disease-based, or at least a public health-based, approach as more effective.

The thing is, Coccougs, countries that direct scarce national resources into a public health approach to drug abuse have better outcomes than those (like ours) that favor the criminal justice approach (see Holland and Switzerland, for example). On a per-dollar basis, treatment is about seven times more effective than incarceration in terms of reducing relapse.

This is entirely aside from the fact that the criminal activity associated with drug abuse is at least partially due to prohibition. Remember the lessons of our "noble experiment" with alcohol prohibition.

I'm sorry, but despite your earnestly argued and well-intentioned convictions, the facts don't bear out your view of reality.

Yes indeed.

If you rob a bank, it is still against the law for the government to seize your home and other assetts and then auction them off.

Get arrested for drugs though and suddenly cops are bying your car for fifty dollars and a good laugh at your expense. The government doesnt even have to prove you bought the car with drug money-you have to prove you didnt.

The war on drugs completely ignores our most basic constitutional rights on many levels.

Criminal justice is its own worst enemy. It makes a criminal of justice.