Legalize?, where do you stand? Options

This thread is kind of two pronged topic. For one I'm curious to see people's opinions about the legalization of drugs just in general. Then I want to know what readers think about the war on terror compared to the war on drugs.

Since I'm interested in what YOU guys think I'm going to just kinda step back for the moment and see if there are any takers.

This is very simplistic but it cant be avoided on an internet forum. This issue gets to the very root of some of the most important questions being faced by society and therefore by philosophers, scoiologists, politicians, businesses, "everyday" paople, and everyone. Though not all people are asking these questions, all are being affected by the current attemps of those who do ask to answer them. There are many, but some i feel you have touched on are:

Why does the so called "left" and the so called "right" feel the way they do? What are their motivations for advocating a certain path?

This in turn leads to our next series of questions which are interrelated:

What constitutes a moderate? What are the motivations behind moderatism (i am reluctant as many are to use the word moderation here)? From what areas of society do the majority of "right" "left" and "moderates" hail? Are the philosophies and opinions of the members of each of these "factions" based on self devised, logical, and independant education and research, or is it the result of word of mouth, or of popular "opinion"? How does the sources of opinion on matters differ across the population of each "faction? Do people in leaderships sources of opinion differ fom those of commercial members, or that of "worker" members? How does a members economic situation affect their ability to form opinions? And so on and so on.....

I watched a doco lately on "opinions" in america, where they asked people individually to rate their feelings on certain topics from one to ten. Like "women should have the right to choose abortion" - the 1 was strongly agree and 10 was strongly disagree. Then the people were put into groups of 10 or so, and the group had to discuss the topic and come to a unanimous consensus, and pick one number that they would all agree was the group "rating" between 1 and 10 (the groups involved people whose answers occurred in the same range 1-3 4-6 or 7-10). In each case the opinions all became ore "extreme" in the group. The 1-3 would usually settle on a 1 (even though most of the members of this group had individually picked a 2 or a 3), the 7-10s usually settled for 10, and the 4-6s usually settled for a 5. in most cases it was found that the most educaed on the topic, usualy had the most extreme views, 1s 10s and 5s, and that these were the people who had the most influence on the consensual group decision. Interesting.

I think you also need to add to a simplistic assesment of the drug issue the ramifications that are apparent in terms of the legal drug industry, the health and community services industry, and the arms and weapons industries. To leave this out of a summing up of the "situation" as it is, is futile. Its like predicting the outcome of a sports match after only assesing the abilities of two players, despte the fact that there are 10 on the field.