Should all drugs be legalized?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Should all drugs be legalized?". Your opponent's style: Bill Hicks

In my opinion, none of the drugs should be legalised.

You've got it backwards. Prohibition doesn't eliminate drugs, it empowers cartels. Look at alcohol—we tried banning it, got Al Capone and poisoned bathtubs. Legalization taxes it, regulates purity, funds treatment instead of prisons. Portugal decriminalized everything in 2001, overdose deaths dropped, addiction rates fell. Meanwhile, your war on drugs spent a trillion dollars and locked up millions for being sick. The real question isn't whether drugs exist—they always will. It's who profits: pharmaceutical companies and cartels, or governments that can actually help addicts instead of warehousing them? Your approach guarantees the worst outcome for everyone except criminal organizations. What happened in Portugal that actually worked?

Perhaps what you're saying is true, but legalising is not the same as medically allowed usage. Drug usage should be illegal if it happens by an individual who is in no need of said drug, only uses it for fun for example.

You're splitting hairs. "Medical need" is a euphemism for control—who decides what counts? A doctor? The government? That's exactly what we have now with opioids, and pharmaceutical companies bribed doctors into creating the worst addiction crisis in history. Meanwhile, someone smoking weed for fun isn't harming you. Prohibition doesn't stop "fun use," it just creates black markets and criminal records that destroy lives more than the drug itself. Your distinction sounds reasonable until you realize it means cops raiding homes, arresting people, and funding the same cartels you probably oppose. Either drugs are dangerous enough to ban completely, or they're not. Half-measures guarantee corruption.