Tamar,
You have a very smart son! I think he's right about both the probable age restrictions and the effect to those younger than the 'cutoff' age. However, legalization (or 'decriminalization' which was suggested by Evan) does reduce (although not eliminate) some of the effects on the non-drug users by lessening the need for stealing or violence. The user him/herself may not get off drugs any faster but the effect on family, friends and innocent bystanders would be lessened. If, as John Harvey suggests, they'll still steal to support themselves it's less than stealing to support themselves and pay for street drugs too.

Also, after getting 2 kids through their college years, and remembering back when I was that age (no, I didn't have a dinosaur as a pet), I've seen a lot of kids break loose between 18 and 25 doing what was forbidden at home. Luckily most of them stop at a beer binge or two, but the 'good' kids are more apt to try what was discouraged at home when they leave than the 'bad' kids who did the same things at 15 and got it out of their systems.

And frankly I'd prefer a legal economy to an underground criminal-controlled economy any day. But the effect (# of doses to addiction, relative percentage of users who become addicted) of 'street' drugs is so much worse than alcohol and tobacco that we'd be opening up a LARGE can of worms to put them on the same availability as alcohol.

< set rant off >
Barbara

>I decided to discuss this thread with my 14-year-old yesterday. I should start out by saying that this is a really good kid running in a really good crowd, so none of this has personal immediacy for him. OTOH, he's also a tremendous observer of people - reads them like books.
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>His view on legalization was that it's a bad idea. He points out that we'd probably put age restrictions (likely 18) and that, by the time people are 18, they're beyond the "forbidden fruit" aspect that some here have mentioned as an argument for legalization.
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>He also pointed out that, while we might get rid of an underground economy based on drugs, we'd replace it with a legal economy based on drugs.
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>Both good points, I thought.
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>Tamar