The initial speaker was Governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico.  He argued that:

• Legalization of drugs would lead to a decrease in drug use (he did not really give reasons, but he implied that it rebellion against the system was a major cause of use.
• He said that drug use was not really a serious enough offense to justify the penalties that are typically imposed.
• He said that drugs were harmful, but that this should be treated as a public health problem and we should try to change the culture to discourage drug use as we have with smoking.

Prof Daniel Polsby, for legalization from a libertarian perspective.

• Costs of the war on drugs itself are high, perhaps hifer than the costs of the drug abuse itself.
• Drugs vary a lot, marijuana is relatively benign, amephtamines cause people to quarrel, hype people up.  Heroin smooths out your day and helps you sleep.
• consequences of legalization to American economy are hard to assess, it might stop the outflow of money to criminals.  Retirement might be earlier, more tax revenue, greater environmental protection, respect for property rights....
• medications like Prozac might not be profitable if the legal drug companies had to compete with unregulated producers.
• regulation of all drugs by the FDA would be called into question - prescription drugs could be freely available.  People seem to want the government standing guard over medicines.
• At least initially, there would be more widespread use of drugs - they would become mroe pervasive.  They would be less expensive and less trouble to get.  More kids would experiment with pot if it was available over the coutner.  There would be a lot more heroin addicts around, who would be marginal members of society.  More heart attacks and road rage due to amphetamines.  More hippies.
• Compensating benefits:  first principles:  the aim of public policy should be to minimize the sum of the social costs of bad behavior vs. the costs of enforcement.  If enforcement is ineffective, it is not worth doing.
• Costs in surveillance and decreased personal liberty are too high, especially since enforcement is not effective anyway.  There is plenty around despite our spending on enforcement.
• I do not agree with Governor Johnson that we are imprisoning lots of innocent flower children, most of the people in jail are irredemiably bad men.Lots of people plead guilty to a non-violent offense as part of a plea bargain.
• We justify criminal law against behaviors that benefit an individual and harm society.  Smoking pot has a lot of harms:  makes you overeat, impairs short term memory, cut motivation, etc.  These costs fall on the user and are temporary.  Lots of things we do can cause problems for us.
• Fundamental distinction:  blame people for their own behavior rather than for the "things" that cause it:  tobacco, guns, drugs, TV, etc.
• Many illegal drugs other than marijuana are dangerous to use and it is reasonable to want to live in a world where there are restrictions onthe use, especially public use.  But adults have the right to make this choice.
• Even if you use in the morality of using criminal sanctions to discourage drug use, it is wrong to treat this kind of behavior as equivalent to murder, rape, robbery, etc.
• There is little evidence that drug use causes all the problems attributed to it by anti-drug crusaders
• If we cut off the war on drugs we would have an extra $25 billion to spend on the problems legalization would cause.
• As a compromise, I suggest we legalize pot, make the other drug offenses misdemeanors.

• I am not a "liberatarian" but a conservative.  Freedom with responsibility, there are some limits on our freedoms - where do you draw the line
• If you just value unfettered freedom, the consequences do not matter (this is a Kantian argument, he us using as a straw man).
• Second argument:  the approach we are taking is unsuccessful - costs vs. benefits.  But too many people's lives were ruined by drugs, the "if it feels good, do it" philosophy.
• People need some assistance from the government in running their lives.  Children need to be protected - adults must sacrifice some things for their children.
• An example:  defacto legalization of marijuana in Alaska by the court;  the result was a doubling of the use of marijuana by youth, at twice the level of usage in the rest of the country.
• Burden of proof lies with those who would change the law.  Costs in homelessness, unemployment, dropouts, lawsuits, medical costs, mental illness, crime, child abuse, child neglect, would go up.
• Is the war on drugs effective?  Depends on the part of it?  Increasing penalties for crack cocaine was done at request of people from minority community.
• In the 1980s, we saw a reduction in drug use in this country.  Then in the beginning of this decade, we saw a doubling of use among young? We had a consistent policy in the 80s, a consistent message. Hollywood stopped glamorizing drugs.  In the beginning of this decade, Hollywood began glamorizing drugs again, saying it wasn't that important.  Budgets were cut for drug enforcement, President said he tried it once...   This caused a doubling of use, now we see a leveling off..  Private sector was involved.
• Impact of legalization on us as a society would be too great.
• [Note reference to decade by decade changes in environment, attributed to policy changes.]
• Zero tolerance policy in the military largely eliminated drug use in military.  Do we want police, airline pilots, etc. to be on drugs?
• Changing policy will cause an increase in spending and have destructive effects on society