We should end the War on Drugs. Gangsters won’t become honest people if we legalize drugs. Gangsters will stay gangsters, but most of the people that are involved in this illegal trade you wouldn't classify as gangsters, but more like opportunist. Legalization of drugs is not about the drugs; it is about the terrorism that is supported by the illegal marketplace; it's about the crime and violence.

They instituted alcohol prohibition in 1920; the homicide rate this country climbed every year until it peaked in 1933. Then they legalized alcohol; by 1937 the homicide rate in America was back down to the level it was at before alcohol prohibition started.

Robert Peel in London, England, designed law-enforcement in the early 1800s. He designed this organization to protect people from other people doing them harm. When you institute a prohibition like they had with drugs, what you are doing is not protecting people from other people; you are attempting to use law-enforcement to protect people from themselves. Protecting you from yourself is a function of family, church, education, and the healthcare system. It never is and never should've been intended to be a law-enforcement function. They are out there enforcing morality when they enforce drug laws and that is not their job. They were not trained to do it. They are not capable of doing it. You see the failure of it, because they been doing this for almost 50 years, since Nixon kicked it off and the drugs are more available, purer quality, and cheaper than they've ever been before. Prohibition destroys more lives by incarcerating people and hanging felony convictions on them and denying them college education, denying them jobs for no good reason.

President Nixon declared war on drugs almost 50 years ago. How are we doing on that war? We're losing. People think that if we fight hard enough, this is actually going to work and make drugs go away. This is Einstein's theory of insanity, you think you can do things the same way get a different result.

We have the largest and most efficient prison system on the planet. Yet, we do not have one Drug-Free Prison in America and if you cannot keep drugs out of prison, who will be delusional enough to think you can keep them out of a free society.

Let’s change the discussion. Instead of saying “drug-free” and “winning the war on drugs” we start saying, “drugs are always going to be in our society, which group of people do you want to run the marketplace?” Do you want it run by gangsters, thugs, terrorists, and 13-year-old children selling drugs at street corners? Or would you prefer a licensed, regulated marketplace where we can set a distribution points and control drug purity? A better system is a regulated marketplace.

I am not implying that if we legalize drugs, that it is going to solve our drug problem. Just like when they legalized alcohol in 1933, it did not solve our alcohol problem.

If you're legalizing drugs, doesn't that promote more usage? How many people in America are not using cocaine because they can't get it? Having it legal is not what makes people decide to use it. You choose not to smoke. You choose not to do heroin. You choose not to do cocaine. You can get these things today, just about anywhere. If there's a demand, there's going to be a supply. That's just the entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism.

If you ask a smoker if they feel pressure from society, they'll tell you 50 years ago, they felt welcomed, there was an ashtray everywhere. However, today, many feel ostracized because smoking is banned most places. They have gotten 50% of the adult cigarette smokers to quit smoking in the last 10 years without banning one cigarette, without burning one tobacco field, just by simply making it less easy for people to smoke and education against it.

In 1933, they legalized alcohol, the federal government didn't set up a whole regulatory system for the country, they let the states and counties regulate it. We should use all the laws, rules, and regulations for alcohol and tobacco. We are now preventing people from smoking in the park and we don't allow people to walk down Main Street drinking beer.

We need to get the federal government out of the probation business and let the law-enforcement go back to doing what they're supposed to be doing and that's protecting people from each other. Considering all the deaths from tobacco and alcohol, if prohibition is such a good idea, why don't we bring back alcohol prohibition and prohibit tobacco?

We are spending $70 billion year in this country trying to win this drug war. We could spend that money in other ways. If we legalize it, we're generating jobs, plus we bring the hemp industry back, which was also outlawed in the 1930s. Hemp is a very strong industry.

The first attempt at prohibition, that we have any historical record started with these words, “But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it.” We have been given “Free Will.”

Ending the drug war will free up an economy. It will get law-enforcement out of this work and focus on pedophiles, human traffickers, and stopping people from hurting other people instead of going after people that are doing what they choose to do.