[WanderingKnight]

Which doesn't address the costs of treating the addict.

Oh, I guess I should also take into account the ongoing costs, both in lives lost to illegal drug trade crime and money to the "War on Drugs", right? 20 billion dollars per year in the US alone.

A red herring is something that has no relation to the debate at hand, like your citing of extreme sports, so yeah I think I know exactly what it is.

No, it's not a red herring. If it were, I would be diverting my attention fully to extreme sports. In any case, the only thing it might be is a flawed analogy. Stop invoking fallacies just because it makes you feel you know something about logic.

As for the strawman part, you think it might be the whole misrepresenting my arguement to state a position you think I should have about a completely unrelated subject.

Why don't you prove I'm misrepresenting your argument? All the reasons you've given me to ban drugs can be equally used to ban extreme sports. You don't like thinking about such possibility because extreme sports don't get such bad rep (and because they're also a big business).

Are they taking a outside chemical substance to alter their mental state? No. Once again this is a red herring.

Umm, you know that all drugs do is play with your own body's secretion of substances? Extreme fear and anxiety are as valid an outside element as any drug. Just because you put nothing into your body doesn't make it any different from your "moral standpoint" (and if it does, I find your moral integrity laughable).

How can I back it up? There have been studies published on the subject.

From your first Wikipedia link:

The risk[1] of becoming cocaine-dependent within 2 years of first use (recent-onset) is 5-6%; after 10 years, it's 15-16%.

Seems pretty small to me.

And I didn't mention either heroin or meth because those do suck. They have a pretty high chance of making your body dependent. It doesn't mean you can claim all drugs completely suck you dry.

By the way, in no way I am advocating cocaine consumption. I absolutely abhor cocaine not only because it does a very good job at making you addicted, but because the effect itself seems rather pointless to me. But I'm not going to ban it because I don't like it (though I will try to persuade my friends not to take it).

Though I agree that the whole war on drugs thing has been grossly mismanaged.

Mismanaged? Couldn't it be because it doesn't make fucking sense in the first place?

Legalize the damn thing. You'll see violent crime over drug trade down. Regulate it. You'll see the number of deaths due to consumption of toxic side products go down. Educate. You'll see the number of people choosing to consume hard drugs go down.

Anything else does nothing other than perpetuate the multimillionaire business that is the illegal drug market.