The question is not whether legalisation would increase drug use. It almost certainly would.
The real question is whether the negative societal impact of that increase would outweigh the positive; taxable revenue, saved police time, better help and support for addicts, better control on drug content/quality, reduced stigma, and increased social liberty.
*Inb4 Cody appears and tells that it won't cause any negative social impact*
Well, I think that it would surely decrease public violence, increase income and taxable revenue and save resources, etc.
But talking about the negative social impact:
You would have more family's with problems because of drugs
(Probably Cody will appear and tell me that it won't cause any problem of that kind)
But even if they increase, I wouldn't really blame the drugs, but a weak marriage with a lack of good communication or something else (wich with or without drugs would have ended up screwed).
The same could be said with people ruining their lifes because of an addiction (if they wanted to kill themselves, an knife could be as effective as an overdose to kill themselves, or if they wanted toe vade reality they could also find an addiction in something else than drugs).
And I could continue with more problems that could be detonated, but you can imagine them.
But I agree with cody in this: If legalizing drugs increase social violence, drugs wouldn't be the cause. They would be caused by a weak formation inside the family, lack of moral formation, education, job opportunities, etc.
However, one thing is sure: in a country (like mine) in wich you don't have the things I mentioned above, legalizing drugs would detonate/make worse social problems.
So, my conclusion from that would be that legalizing dugs doesn't have a major negative social impact if that country has covered most of the social needs of it's people (like Netherlands
).
Netherlands legalized drugs and no big social poblems detonated, but they have very low rates of social violence
I'll take the homicide rate as a way to mesure violence since it's the most objective stat for that:
http://en.wikipedia....l_homicide_rateIf you add education problems, poverty and corruption (I'm talking about my own country here), it would be really dangerous.
But in the other hand, the country would get more resources from that market (or at lest not wste money trying to fight drug dealing), and the economy of the countries that produce it would rise, and that money could be destined to cove those needs. The sad part is that coruption could sink that money... but overall it sounds like it could have more benefits than downfalls (as long as the government does his job...)