The reduction in tobacco use is attributed to campaign awareness.
Decriminalization of drugs should be accompanied by a comparable awareness campaign. But it needs to be honest. Scare tactics will backfire.
And the typical left wing thinking is coddle the criminals and turn the victim into the victimizer.
That's typical right wing criticism of the left, but probably not correct. In any case, I don't count myself as left wing. I'm a pragmatist. What we have been doing has been an abject failure. As a pragmatist, I favor trying something different.
You'd still have the same exact problem in Jar's scenario.
I haven't seen jar's scenario. I have only seen your summary, but there is a good chance you missed important details.
First of all, the Constitution only applies to the United States, not Columbia.
Sure, just like the constitutional prohibition on torture applies only in the US. So we use "extraordinary rendition" and torture them overseas. It is disgusting. I have contempt for our government when it does that, and I have contempt when it coerces Colombia or other countries to do what would be unconstitutional here. And now you seem to be saying that, as an evangelical Christian, you are every bit as unprincipled as those who do extraordinary rendition.
Secondly, if the Colombian gov't didn't want to play along, they wouldn't.
Sure. just like Saddam didn't want to play along, so he didn't.
Except this time, on top of their still being violence attributed to drugs, on top of it, the taxpayers would subsidize all of its own problems.
Is anybody proposing subsidy?