AC

I stand resolved: The abuse of illegal drugs ought to be treated as a matter of public
health, not of criminal justice. To clarify the resolution I offer the following
definitions:

Abuse of illegal Drugs: the use of any chemical substance (especially controlled
substances such as psychoactive drugs, narcotics, hormones, prescription
medication or over the counter medicines) in a way that society deems harmful to
the user or others. (WORDIQ)

Ought: Moral obligation (Marriam-Webster)

Public Health: the art and science dealing with the protection and improvement of
community health by organized community effort and including preventive
medicine and sanitary and social science (Marriam-Webster)

Criminal Justice: the procedure by which criminal conduct is investigated,

evidence gathered, arrests made, charges brought, defenses raised, trials conducted,
sentences rendered and punishment carried out. (USlegal, inc)

MY VALUE FOR THIS DEBATE IS MORALITY. Because the resolution

includes the word ought, which is moral obligation, morality is the most
appropriate value for this debate.

Value Criterion: Maximizing fairness

1st Contention:

2nd Contention: treating the abuse of illegal drugs as a matter of criminal justice is
unfair because it is not efficient.

a) Deterrence fails

- Get involved with bad people become worse

b) Waste of money
- Court system bogging, prison over-crowding, waste of money
3rd Contention: Abuse of illegal drugs leads to medical issues such as depression
and schizophrenia and is therefore a matter of PUBLIC HEALTH

According to The National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Drug abuse is a serious

public health problem that affects almost every community and family in some
way. Each year drug abuse results in around 40 million serious illnesses or injuries
among people in the United States. Abused drugs include: Amphetamines,
Anabolic steroids, Club drugs, Cocaine, Heroin, Inhalants, Marijuana, and
Prescription drugs. Drug abuse also plays a role in many major social problems,
such as drugged driving, violence, stress and child abuse. Drug abuse can lead to
homelessness, crime and missed work or problems with keeping a job. It harms
unborn babies and destroys families.”

Journal of Psychoactive Drugs: Prescription Drug Abuse: An Epidemic Dilemma

Volume 42 (2), June 2010 p 131, Robert L. DuPont, M.D. (*President, Institute for
Behavior and Health, Inc., Rockville, MD.)
“Educating the public, patients, and physicians about the misuse and abuse of
prescribed controlled substances is an essential part of addressing the growing
prescription drug problem. Other solutions to reduce the illegal misuse and abuse
of these drugs include incentivizing pharmaceutical companies to develop abuse-
resistant formulas, developing a network of PDMP programs in combination with
increased law enforcement efforts to reduce illegal sale and distribution of these
drugs, and improving prescription drug abuse treatment. Vigorously enforced
drugged driving regulations including those that deal with impaired driving due to
legally obtained prescription drugs are essential to reducing prescription drug
abuse and to improving highway safety. These recommendations hold the promise
of significantly reducing the ongoing and growing prescription drug abuse problem
in the U.S.”
NC
DEFFINITION: “Criminal justice system” includes all of the functions of the
following:

(d) The department of rehabilitation and correction, probation departments, county

and municipal jails and workhouses, and any other department, agency, or facility
that is concerned with the rehabilitation or

Value: Social Welfare. Because the treatment of others affects the society, social
welfare is the best value for this debate.

Value Criterion: Minimizing crime.

1st Contention: If we didn’t treat it as criminal justice, the rates would go up.

Under decriminalization, prices will be low enough to spur drug use

Bennett, William J. Director, Office of National Drug Control Policy. “National
Drug Control Strategy.” The White House/The Bush Administration, September
1989. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ondcp/119466.pdf
Drug traffickers, by contrast, are involved in crime for profit alone. An average
gram of cocaine now sells for $60 to $80. The free-market price would be roughly
5 percent of that - $3 or $4. If legalized drug sales were heavily regulated and
taxed to restrict availability and maximize government revenue, then a gram of
cocaine might sell for $30 or $40. In that case, criminal organizations could still
undercut legal prices and turn a substantial profit. In truth, to destroy the cocaine
black market entirely, we would probably have to make the drug legally available
at not much more than $10 a gram. And then an average dose of cocaine would
cost about 50 cents - well within the lunch-money budget of the average American
elementary school student. In short, legalizing drugs would be an unqualified
national disaster. In fact, any significant relaxation of drug enforcement - for
whatever reason, however well-intentioned - would promise more use, more crime,
and more trouble for desperately needed treatment and education efforts.

2nd Contention: Human nature; coercion is necessary

Eg: what do we do to someone who shoots a bunch of other people?

a) It’s human nature to not do something when it is not mandatory: we are

lazy. The criminal justice system provides the coercion necessary to
ensure that the drug abusers actually improve. If we were to treat drug
abuse as a matter of public health, there is no reason why all people
would be helped. Also, major criminals, such as the chief distributers of
drugs would not be punished.

b) Mandated rehab within the criminal justice system works

Drug Free Australia “Arguments for Prohibition (http://www.drugfree.org.au/
Pdf at www.drugfree.org.au/fileadmin/.../Taskforce_Arguments_for_Prohibition.pdf)
ʻHarm reductionʼ measures, whereby the financial costs of ameliorating the harms
of recreational drug use and its associated addictions are shifted from the user to
the community, (which is often unaware of the substantial costs they foot) will
often present unending financial liability to the community where there is, as is
often the case with harm reduction, no focus on getting the user off drugs. For
instance, a 2009 British heroin trial spent £15,000 per annum on supplying heroin
and support to users, reducing their crime from an average of £15,600 per annum
to £2,600 per annum – this represents an added societal burden of £17,000 for each
participant and a net loss of £2,000 per heroin trial participant to that society. By
comparison, a rehabilitated drug user no longer needs crime to support an
expensive habit that no longer exists. Sweden, with its restrictive drug policy,
which includes mandatory rehabilitation, has brought its drug use levels down
from the highest levels in Europe to the lowest amongst developed countries
worldwide. Also the costs of rehabilitation of drug users are lower than the cost of
imprisonment, and negate the health harms to individual users once clean.
Societal rights outweigh individual rights

Drug abuse hurts others

Goldstein, Avram, and Kalant, Harold. Professor of Pharmacology at Stanford;
Professor of Pharmacology at University of Toronto. “Drug Policy: Striking the
Right Balance.” Science 249.4976, 1990. All drugs can be dangerous; even when
they are pure and are used on prescription to treat disease, they often have adverse
effects. Most governments are required, by public consensus and demand, to
protect citizens against numerous avoidable hazards and not merely to warn them
of possible dangers. The U.S. Pure Food and Drug Laws, enacted in 1906, set up
the technical machinery, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for assessing
drug hazards, forbidding over-the-counter sale of the more dangerous drugs,
requiring manufacturers to report on unanticipated adverse reactions, and
exercising legal control over drug distribution. This legislation grew out of the
recognition that innocent people, without the technical expertise needed to assess
the risks, were being hurt by drugs with unacceptably high risk-to-benefit ratios
(3). The use of drugs for nonmedical purposes carries risks not only for the user,
but for society as well. A compassionate society ultimately pays the costs, not only
of injury to nonusers, but even of self-inflicted injuries to users themselves.
Society pays the costs of all acute and chronic toxicity through loss of productivity
and by subsidizing medical care, providing welfare assistance to users' families and
dealing with the special educational needs of children whose brains were damaged
in utero (4, 5). Thus, drug abuse is rarely a victimless crime. We think that society
has

BLOCKS

- “CRIMINALIZING DRUG USE AND NOT ALCOHOL/TOBACCO IS INCONSISTENT”

 So if those were treated as a matter of criminal justice too, then it would be right.

- “WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO WHATEVER WE WANT TO WITH OUR BODIES”

Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 29.
(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full
development of his personality is possible.

(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject
only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose
of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of
others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order
and the general welfare in a democratic society.

(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the
purposes and principles of the United Nations.

http://www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Drug_Usage

Also, illegal drugs is a very large group which ranges from mild drugs like
cannabis to very dangerous one likes PCP. The affirmative will have to defend
the whole group, and the negative will have to argue even the mild ones deserve
a penalty.
This year alone, over $40 million have been spent on the War on Drugs. Over 1.3 million people
have been arrested this year for drug law offenses. And over 8500 have been incarcerated for
those offenses this year