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Topic: Viewpoints - Should illegal drugs be decriminalized?

From Joseph Califano's statement supporting drug
 
prohibition:

   Myth 3: Legalized drugs would be
   available for adults and not to
   children. Nothing in the American
   experience gives any credence to our
   ability to keep legal drugs from children.
   cigarettes and alcohol and yet three
   million adolescents smoke, constituting a
   $1-billion-a-year market, and twelve
   million underage Americans drink, a
   $10-billion-a-year market.

Nothing in the American experience gives any credence
to our ability to keep illegal drugs away from 
children, either. In fact, there have been some studies
showing that kids find it easier to get marijuana than
alchol. We may be LESS able to keep illegal drugs away
from kids than legal drugs.  Indeed, since distribution
channels for illegal drugs are totally uncontrolled, 
this is quite likely.  Instead of a licensed, regulated
distribution system, one has a drug dealer on every
corner and in every school.  

I think people who support drug prohibition tend to make
 
a couple of erroneous assumptions:

1. That prohibition is actually keeping people from using
   drugs;
2. The only alternative is unbridled hedonism.

Both assumptions are questionable at best. I've seen
studies suggesting that kids can buy marijuana more easily
than alcohol, and I have no doubt that if I wanted to buy
any drug I could find the drug I wanted with little effort.
So what, exactly, is drug prohibition prohibiting?  

Also, there is a whole spectrum of alternatives to total
prohibition.  Decriminalization (which I take to mean
treating drug offences similarly to parking violations,
for instance) is one; regulated sale (similar to alcohol)
is another.   Some kind of controlled distribution of
drugs to addicts (the Swiss model) is another.