Well, if we reach the conclusion that government has a legitimate interest in halting the spread of dangerous drugs (at least I've reached that conclusion)
Explain your reasoning for this.
1. (Some) drugs are undeniably harmful to the user, and since drug use is a generally social activity, there is a good chance that individual use can translate into the creation of more individual users.
2. A responsible government has the duty to protect its citizens from harm.
3. Therefore, a responsible government has the duty to stop the spread of dangerous drugs.
I see the problems in this sort of logic. Plenty of things are harmful. For instance, you might replace "drugs" with "McDonald's food" in my syllogism, and it'd still work. Of course, McDonald's food is not inherently bad, whereas I think one could probably make that argument for heroin or crack or crystal meth, etc. But, I think that criticism of this argument is still important. Lots of legal things are harmful, but that doesn't mean that all harmful things should be made legal. As with all laws, there needs to be a (sometimes arbitrary) line drawn between what is acceptable and what is not.
Edit: Dave, I think I agree with what you've said about littering as applied to drugs. What I mean is that I think (some) drugs should be illegal, and the laws should be enforced, but I don't think that we should be spending billions of dollars on a "war on drugs."
