Legalize and Legitimize

It's legal, so there must not be anything wrong with it, right? That's the problem with legalizing anything, people begin to believe there's nothing wrong with it just because it's legal. But there are many things that are legal which result in scourges on society, especially those things that result in addictions. If Prohibition had never been repealed would we have the high rates of alcoholism we experience today? What about gambling addictions? And pornography, would there be so much heartache and so many broken homes if it were illegal and harder to get a hold of?

To illustrate, let's take a look at abortion rates in the United States before abortion for convenience was legalized in 1973. For the three years before it was legalized (as far back as I could find on the CDC website) the ratio (number of abortions per 1,000 live births) ranged from 52 to 180. Since 1974 (first full year of convenient abortions) the rate has ranged from 238 to 364 (Note: The last year of the report is 2004). That's more than double. I guess twice as many people were convinced that since it's legal it must be OK now.

Many people are crying to legalize currently illegal drugs, more particularly marijuana. Do we want drug usage to double? Triple ... or go even higher? Do we want more people out there not thinking straight? Many argue that we're causing worse crimes because we're actually creating drug lords by keeping these drugs illegal rather than allowing drug lords to become "legitimate" businessmen. What? Are we creating thieves by having crimes against theft? Should we turn robbery into a "legitimate" business? Do we create murderers by having laws against murder? What kind of ridiculous argument is that? We don't force anyone to do something wrong just by making an act illegal. They choose to do something wrong whether it's legal or not. (Remember, making it legal doesn't make it right.) Others argue that it's too hard to police drug use. If theft or murder were too hard to police, should we stop making those acts illegal?

Should we get rid of any law because we don't have enough backbone, because it's just too hard on us to do the right thing? If fighting against what's wrong is not working well enough or we don't like handling it because it's too inconvenient; those just aren't legitimate excuses to give up and make anything legal.

The inconvenient truth here is that to legalize is to legitimize. Let's not legitimize any more scourges on society. In fact, why don't we get rid of the legal monsters we've already created?