The Decriminalization Topic

Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 4
Verb Stem................................................................................................................................................ 7
Decriminalize......................................................................................................................................8
Legalize.............................................................................................................................................13
Modifiers...........................................................................................................................................15
Passive Voice.....................................................................................................................................18
Aff & Neg Ground................................................................................................................................. 19
Affirmative Ground...........................................................................................................................20
Negative Ground................................................................................................................................24
The Areas............................................................................................................................................... 28
Introduction.......................................................................................................................................29
Thoughts on the Areas.......................................................................................................................30
Should be Included................................................................................................................................ 31
Marijuana...........................................................................................................................................32
Organ & Tissue Sales.........................................................................................................................38
Physician Assisted Suicide.................................................................................................................47
Prostitution........................................................................................................................................53
Should be Considered............................................................................................................................ 59
Concealed Carry................................................................................................................................60
Drinking Age.....................................................................................................................................80
HIV Status.........................................................................................................................................61
*Immigration.....................................................................................................................................64
Narcotics............................................................................................................................................66
Online Poker......................................................................................................................................38
Public Order Offenses........................................................................................................................69
Needs Exploration................................................................................................................................. 78
Abortion............................................................................................................................................79
Drug Use in Sports............................................................................................................................80
Final Stuff.............................................................................................................................................. 86
Proposal for the Topic........................................................................................................................87
RJ Giglios Thoughts.........................................................................................................................88
James Herndon Emory Debate
With Special thanks to:
Jackie Poapst for the area work and many others for the edits and feedback.

Introduction
Why this topic area?
I am proposing a topic that calls for the legalization of a set of criminal activities. The idea is one that
sprung from discussions I had with multiple members of the debate community and attempts to meet the
following requests:
First, provide a set of affirmatives that the average twenty year old would be willing to affirm, research,
and defend. I think that this resolution does that. Online Gambling and marijuana, for example, are two
very popular illegal activities. Additionally, many classes that the average college debater is taking are
likely to discuss issues like suicide, prostitution, and illicit drug use. This topic allows those things to be
issues to affirm and negate.
Second, the best topics from the past are what I term, negative policy action. In other words, instead of
asking the government to be the solution to a set of problems, the best resolutions ask how the
government can stop being the source of problems. It generates better uniqueness for disads, less generic
competition ground, and importantly a more nuanced relationship to the government with the topic. I
personally have had trouble justifying USFG involvement in the Arab Spring, energy production, and
Native country. However, the difference for me has always been dont say I dont want to defend the
government, instead say, the government shouldnt arrest me for playing poker online, etc.
A corollary to this, is I think this topic does very well versus the states counterplan more on that in the
affirmative ground section. But, legal crimes makes it hard for state action to solve.
Third, it should be an area that is attractive to novices and recruiting people into debate. While each of
the subject areas could easily require two semesters worth of in depth research, they are also subjects that
people should both feel excited about and comfortable discussing. When we have our novice outreach
events, I am personally excited about the possibility of telling college first years that they get to talk about
this topic area.
Fourth, this is a resolutional area not a topic area. When discussing what makes a good topic with
others, the thing that stood out was that topics that were based around an action were far better topics than
those based around area. My favorite topics, in no particular order, were Title VII, sanctions,
development assistance, and the first middle east. All of those topics had ideas for action as their
foundation. This topic attempts to fit into that mold. We should debate about actions while researching
advantages that interest us. Forcing an area like Natives and the Arab Spring produced some of the
poorest resolutions in some of the most important areas.
The resolutions that have struggled are problem-area resolutions. We want to debate areas but then
struggle to find mechanisms to meet those areas. We want to debate democracy and the Middle East but
democracy assistance wasnt very strong. We want to debate Europe but enact a policy wasnt
viable. People wanted to debate important court cases but struggled with overrule them. This topic is a
vote for a mechanism.
Finally, I think the attractiveness of this topic is in its simplicity. This topic paper is a call for a broad
sweeping mechanism of action that anyone could understand. It should then include a wide range of
areas that make defending that broad of a change easier for the affirmative. Essentially the topic calls for
the aff to defend a broad act of legalization in an area they find interesting, and for the negative to

prepare in those areas. They are controversies because they are currently illegal despite growing public
acceptance.

Why talk about this for a year?

The introduction answered a good part of this question, however, it is worth noting that there are both
educational and timeliness benefits to this topic area. [plus every old topic paper I could find included a
why talk about it for a year type section]
In terms of education, it was exciting, after announcing my intentions publicly of completing this topic
paper, to get feedback from many alums of the debate community. Lawyers and law students, who are
studying or working in criminal law, were quick to get involved with things they knew and how it related.
A few old kritik debaters emailed with discussions of how interesting an affirmative topic this would be
for those interested in criminalization as a topic area. A couple of people whose opinions I value,
responded with excitement about the topic area. In other words, criminal law, the ways one can get
arrested, and the general lack of quick social change in this country are all in need of greater academic
study and debate.
In terms of timeliness, it is often a double edged sword with uniqueness. The more timely an issue, the
more likely we are to have major uniqueness issues throughout the year. This topic seems to toe that line
quite nicely. For example, while marijuana is being legalized in many states, the federal laws are still
several years away from being to the point of full legalization. Similarly, with physician assisted suicide,
while three states [Oregon, Vermont, and Washington] have legalized it, the federal government has yet to
step in, and is unlikely to do so. IN other words, while there are movements to legalize the areas, given
the current stubbornness of congress, the slowness of the judiciary, and the speed of social change, they
are unlikely to do the aff during the year.
However, those social movements create great debates for both the aff and the neg. The literature on each
of them is robust, and the discussion of the pros and cons are abundant. While there are obviously older
law reviews on all of these subjects, it is not difficult to find timely literature discussing the need for the
change the most popular affirmatives are likely to advocate.
Finally, Ill conclude that this topic offers the ability to discuss social issues, like poverty for example, but
frames that around a call for an action. Lets decriminalize stuff, and talk about the areas we want to with
that action as the center.
Didnt we just have a legal topic? Sure, but most of the topics being written are legal. This could easily
count as the domestic topic as well since most of the issues are criminal and not legal. Voting against an
area because we just had that area is like turning down a delicious sandwich just because you just had a
delicious sandwich I dont follow the logic.

Expectations for this Resolution

The most important question is the stem of action, or what is required of the affirmative. There are
several options. However, a defining aspect of this topic should be that the affirmative is required to
make a large-scale sweeping change of criminal law. This topic is bad if increase the legal marijuana
amount from 1 ounce to 1.5 ounces is topical and there are 7 areas allowing those changes. The best
version of this topic allows the affirmative to choose an area but have to defend a large change in that area
OR has a smaller number of areas. This topic is also bad if the resolution has no unifying action. A revisit
to the Europe topic of enact one or more of the following seems doomed to bad debates that avoid the
critical issues.
The second major question that needs to be answered, and there is a section dedicated to it below, is the
question of decriminalization vs legalization. Decriminalization would essentially function as the no jail
time affs. The advantages would be smaller, but the negative ground would also be smaller. The
alternative of legalization would be broad based change that would bring the act into conformity with the
law. As it was explained to me:

-parking somewhere you shouldnt has been decriminalized. One wouldnt serve jail time for it, but could
be fined for it. Marijuana has been decriminalized in many places.
-doing something without being fined, regulated, or arrested means that it is legalized. Alcohol
consumption was legalized with the 21st amendment.
An amendment to this second concern is that search for a limiting phrase might be in order. For example,
instead of legalize it might make for better debates to allow the affirmative to not have to defend every
small PIC or change the neg could conjure out of the literature. Examples that come to mind include,
not for minors or not at schools. There are a lot of examples that would be small regulations on an
otherwise legalized act.
Finally, given those parameters, the topic should be written to include a large range of areas. Asking the
aff to legalize means that the amount of aff diversity within the area should be smaller. Aff flexibility
can, and should, come from the advantages gained, the justifications for action, and the number of areas
available. I would encourage the topic committee to go one of two ways; legalize fully and include a list
of 10 topics or legalize parts and a smaller more interesting list of 5 areas.
In conclusion:
The action required in the resolution should be sweeping.
The topic should pick legalize or decriminalize.
If legalize the list should be large. If decriminalize the list should be smaller with more area flexibility.
The next section will be a discussion of verb stem possibilities. I will offer my opinion on the possible
choices. Following that there will be sections on affirmative and negative ground generically on the
topic. Finally, the concluding sections will discuss the areas that should be considered for inclusion in the
topic.

Verb Stem

Decriminalize
The verb phrase that I think offers the most affirmative flexibility is decriminalization. A topical aff
would remove the criminal penalties for certain acts. However, it allows some flexibility to maintain
fines, small regulations, and make some changes. In this section, Ill provide a set of evidence that helps
support decriminalization as a possible aff mechanism.
Following are a set of cards that set up the legal boundaries for what constitutes decriminalization versus
legalization with a clear intent to define those parameters. Decriminalization is less change than but can
include legalization, but may be nothing more than a removal or reduction

Decriminalize includes legalization it is an attempt to remove or reduce criminal

penalties
Hein v Lacy 80 [Ronald R. Hein, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Sterling E. Lacy, Defendant-Appellee, No.
50,769, Supreme Court of Kansas, 228 Kan. 249; 616 P.2d 277; 1980 Kan. LEXIS 321; 6 Media L. Rep.
1662, July 18, 1980, Opinion Filed]
On the undisputed factual background, we have concluded that the statements made by defendant in the brochure were substantially true. On the
issue of decriminalization of marijuana, the district court interpreted the word "decriminalization" as that court felt it

was commonly understood. It is apparent that the term "decriminalization of marijuana" is susceptible of
various definitions. For support of plaintiff's definition of decriminalization, we note Black's Law Dictionary 371
(5th ed. 1979), where the term decriminalization is defined as "An official act generally accomplished by
legislation, in which an act or omission, formerly [*261] criminal, is made non-criminal and without punitive
sanctions." See also Harper Dictionary of [***25] Contemporary Usage 192 (1975), where it is stated that
"decriminalize," of relatively recent coinage, is frequently used by persons seeking to abolish legal penalties for
marijuana use, homosexual behavior, prostitution, or attempted suicide. The word "decriminalization" may not be found in
Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1967). We note, however, that on page 579, the term "de" when used as a
prefix with a verb may mean either to remove (a specified thing or things) or to reduce or make lower. Webster would
permit the term "decriminalize marijuana" to be used in the sense of reducing or lowering the criminal
penalty for possession of marijuana as well as to remove all criminal penalties. As noted by the district court, the plaintiff
supported and voted for HB 2313 which would have reduced the legal penalty for the possession of small amounts of marijuana on first offenses.
We have concluded that, under the interpretation of the term "decriminalization of marijuana" as that term was frequently used throughout the
hearings before the Senate committee, the statements in the brochure that the plaintiff voted for and was in favor of the decriminalization of
marijuana [***26] were substantially true and, therefore, a cause of action in defamation cannot be based upon the defendant's statements
contained in the brochure referring to Sen. Hein's "views" and "position" on that subject.

And, that same decision draws a line that includes the lessening of criminal penalties for an act constitutes
decriminalization.

Reducing the criminal penalty

Hein v Lacy 80 [Ronald R. Hein, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Sterling E. Lacy, Defendant-Appellee, No.
50,769, Supreme Court of Kansas, 228 Kan. 249; 616 P.2d 277; 1980 Kan. LEXIS 321; 6 Media L. Rep.
1662, July 18, 1980, Opinion Filed]
HB 2313 contained proposed amendments to the Uniform Controlled Substances Act ( K.S.A. 65-4101 et seq.). At the time HB 2313 was being
considered by the 1977 Kansas legislature, the possession of any quantity of marijuana was a class A misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment
in the county jail for up to one year or by a fine of up to $ 2,500 or both such fine and imprisonment ( K.S.A. 1976 Supp. 65-4127b, 21-4502, and
21-4503). HB 2313, if enacted by the legislature, would have reduced the penalty for the possession of one

ounce or less of marijuana to an unclassified misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not more than $ 100 for the first offense. Upon
subsequent convictions, a person convicted of that offense would be punished as though guilty of a class A misdemeanor. The possession of

greater amounts of marijuana than one ounce was subject to more severe penalties. The minutes of the Senate Federal and [***12] State Affairs
Committee, dated March 31, 1977, reflect that Senator Hein [*255] seconded the motion of Senator Allegrucci to recommend HB 2313
favorably for passage. This motion failed and the bill was ultimately reported to the Senate without recommendation. The journal of the Senate
for April 4, 1977, (pp. 560-561) reflects that Senator Hein moved that HB 2313 be referred back to the Senate committee after Senator Angell
moved that the bill be stricken from the calendar. On that same day, a roll call was taken on whether to reconsider the action of the Senate on HB
2313. Senator Hein voted for reconsideration of the bill, but the motion failed and the bill was not adopted. These documents make it clear from
the actions and votes of Senator Hein that he favored the adoption of HB 2313. The question then arises whether HB 2313

provided for the "decriminalization of marijuana" which was the charge against Senator Hein contained in the statements of the
defendant in the brochure. HB 2313 clearly would have provided for a substantial reduction in the penalty for the
first-time conviction of a possession of a small quantity of marijuana. The ultimate issue is whether this [***13] result would
constitute the "decriminalization of marijuana" as that term is generally understood in common usage today.
Included in the records of the Senate committee are the statements of various witnesses who appeared both in support of and in opposition to HB
2313. It is important to note that a number of the witnesses specifically referred to the reduction of the penalty on possession of small amounts of
marijuana as the "decriminalization of marijuana." It is clear that the common understanding of many of these persons was that

"decriminalization" did not mean the same [**282] as outright legalization -- that decriminalization was a
kind of halfway step toward legalization of marijuana. The witnesses appearing both in favor of and against the bill
used the terms "decriminalization" and "legalization" in a manner reflecting a common understanding of
those terms. The district court, in its memorandum decision granting summary judgment, concluded that the statements made by the
defendant in the brochure that Senator Ron Hein's "arguments and his votes were in favor of the decriminalization of marijuana" fell within the
ambit of fair comment and were protected under freedom [***14] of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States. Hence, it held such statements could not serve as a basis for an action in libel.

The phrase decriminalize or decriminalization is a popular one in the media and academic writings. It
has, however, become so ubiquitous with the marijuana movements that it is hard to find literature not
about marijuana. Despite that, it is a phrase with a strong legal tradition and a solid set of literature. For
example:

It means to make an act no longer a crime or subject to prosecution can be

justified on multiple grounds
HILL & HILL 05 [Gerald N. Hill and Kathleen T. Hill, http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/decriminalize]
decriminalization n. the repeal or amendment (undoing) of statutes which made certain acts criminal , so that
those acts no longer are crimes or subject to prosecution. Many states have decriminalized certain
sexual practices between consenting adults, "loitering," (hanging out without any criminal activity), or out-moded racist laws
against miscegenation (marriage or cohabitation between people of different races). Currently, there is a considerable
movement toward decriminalization of the use of some narcotics (particularly marijuana) by adults, on various grounds,
including individual rights and contention that decriminalization would take the profit out of the drug trade by making drugs available through
clinics and other legal sources.

Here, the noun decriminalization provides a clear line for what a topical affirmative should be expected to
do. As a result of the aff, laws or statutes that make certain acts criminal should be removed such that
those acts are no longer crimes or subject to prosecution. There are also multiple cases, like
miscegenation and sexual laws that have decriminalized previous laws. Decriminalize, defined as the
transitive verb it would be in the topic, has a similarly helpful definition.

Decriminalize means to eliminate criminal penalties OR remove restrictions against

Random House 14 [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/decriminalize?s=t]
decriminalize

[dee-krim-uh-nl-ahyz] Show IPA

verb (used with object), decriminalized, decriminalizing.

to eliminate criminal penalties for or remove legal restrictions against : to decriminalize marijuana.
Also, especially British, decriminalise.

To make legal by changing a law

CAMBRIDGE ONLINE [Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary,
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-english/decriminalize]
decriminalize
verb [T] /dikrmnlz/

to make a particular act no longer illegal by changing a law

decriminalization

/dikrmnlzen/ noun [U]

To cease to treat something as illegal

Random House 14
decriminalize [dkriminlz/] verb
verb: decriminalize; 3rd person present: decriminalizes; past tense: decriminalized; past participle: decriminalized; gerund or present participle:
decriminalizing; verb: decriminalise; 3rd person present: decriminalises; past tense: decriminalised; past participle: decriminalised; gerund or
present participle: decriminalising
1. cease by legislation to treat (something) as illegal. "a battle to decriminalize drugs"

In each of these, the verb phrase has a clear line. To decriminalize something must no longer be treated as
illegal. The status quo, certain acts are illegal. Post plan, it is now sanctioned and legal to engage in
those activities. The reason to choose decriminalization as the verb is that the means by which criminal
penalties are removed or it is treated as no longer illegal can vary. Legal dictionaries tend to go
another step and forward that to decriminalize includes actions that reduce the criminal classification or
status of an act.

Legally, decriminalize, means to remove OR reduce the criminal classification or

status
WEBSTERS LAW DICTIONARY 01
[http://research.lawyers.com/glossary/decriminalize.html]
Decriminalize
Definition - Transitive Verb
: to remove or reduce the
PronunciationdE-'kri-m&n-l-"Iz

criminal classification or status of

Reduce or abolish the penalties for

American Heritage 2000 [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/decriminalize]
decriminalize (d-krm-n-lz) tr.v. decriminalized, decriminalizing, decriminalizes
To reduce or abolish criminal penalties for: decriminalize the use of marijuana.
decriminalization (-l-zshn) n.

These definitions would clearly establish that a reduction in the criminal status would constitute an act of
decriminalization. A topical affirmative would clearly try to reduce the penalties as that would allow

them to access most of the advantages without linking to most of the quality negative ground. As such, if
the topic committee does decide to include options with decriminalization as the required action, finding
an adverb to modify the degree of decriminalization would be advisable.
Another concern that people have stated is about small PICS to overall legalization. If one is interested in
a topic that makes most of those PICS not competitive, then decriminalization should be the choice. Here
is some evidence that defines a repeal of a strict ban with some degree of regulation as a form of
decriminalization.

Decriminalization means to lower the criminal charge allows some form of

regulation
WEBSTERS ONLINE [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decriminalize]
decriminalize transitive verb \()d-kri-m-n-lz, -krim-nl-\
: to make (something that is illegal) legal by changing the law
: to remove or reduce the criminal classification or status of ; especially : to repeal a strict ban on while
keeping under some form of regulation <decriminalize the possession of marijuana>
There are also a good number of contextual cards about the state laws in places like Vermont that discuss
de-criminalization.

Just ending imprisonment is not decriminalization

Philippines Daily Inquirer 11 7 12 [Norman Bordadora, Bills 'decriminalizing' libel a
misnomer, says DOJ chief, lexis]
PENDING bills aimed at decriminalizing libel are "incomplete" and also a "misnomer," said Justice Secretary
Leila De Lima. Submitting a position paper on the bills, De Lima said the authors of the bills failed to include a provision clarifying what
would happen to pending libel cases, should the Revised Penal Code be amended, according to the new proposal.
She also noted that the term "decriminalization" was a misnomer because the bills only sought

to abolish
imprisonment as a penalty. Libel remains a crime in the penal code and there is still a penalty in the form
of a fine, she added. De Lima submitted her position paper after the Senate committee on mass media and public information sought her input
on several pending bills on the matter.
Incomplete
"Without passing upon the wisdom of the bills and assuming only that they will be reconciled and approved, the present forms are incomplete".
De Lima said the bills should contain a provision on pending cases or those filed before the law takes effect in order to avoid ambiguity and
confusion in its application.
"In other words, should the pending cases be considered automatically dismissed or what?" De Lima said of Senate Bill Nos. 2162, 3303, 3244,
3298 and 2668 authored by Francis Escudero, Alan Peter Cayetano, Gregorio Honasan, Pia Cayetano and Manuel Villar respectively.
Sen. Loren Legarda's Senate Bill No. 3294, also on decriminalizing libel, provides for the dismissal of pending libel cases if the measure is
passed. De Lima, however, said Legarda's measure allows a separate filing of a civil action suit for damages independent of criminal action.
To simplify the proceeding, De Lima suggested that the bill make the filing of the criminal action automatically carry with it the filing of the civil
action. Therefore, "no right to reserve the filing of separate civil action will be recognized".
On Sen. Edgardo Angara's Senate Bill No. 2053, abolishing the penalty of imprisonment in libel cases, De Lima

said the use of the term "decriminalize" in its explanatory note was a misnomer.
Still a crime
"First, libel

is still a crime under the proposed bill except that the penalty of imprisonment is sought to be
abolished. There is still a penalty in the form of a fine, " De Lima said.
"The crime is still covered by the Revised Penal Code; hence, still committed against the state. Thus, it is
not accurate to state in the explanatory note of the bill that it intends to decriminalize libel," she added.

Decriminalize means no jail time fines are allowed

USA TODAY 10 29 12 [Editorial: Don't legalize pot just for the high of it,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/10/29/legalize-marijuana-pot-states/1666755/]
Legalize pot? The nation has flirted with the idea before : Jimmy Carter supported decriminalization in his 1976
campaign, but the idea died after his chief drug adviser was reported to have used cocaine at a Washington, D.C., party.
Almost four decades later, though, a pot renaissance is sweeping parts of the USA: Seventeen states and the nation's capital now allow the use of
medical marijuana with a doctor's order, which in some places is ludicrously easy to get. Thirteen

states have decriminalized

pot, which generally means that the punishment for first-time possession of small amounts is a fine with no
jail time.

Legalize
If the topic committee and the community writ large are more interested in forcing the aff to advocate
larger more sweeping change, then legalize is also an option. The definitions of legalize are far more
restrictive than decriminalize. The three cards from the beginning of the decriminalize section could also
easily be used as topicality cards for legalize. It is fairly consistent that legalizing suggests a broader,
bringing into conformity with the law.
The major benefit, or con, to using legalize would be that the majority of debates would be about PICS to
leave some small parts illegal. Legalize would make the best negative ground decriminalize actions. We
would spend the year debating counterplans that decriminalize but leave larger non-punitive punishments
on the books.
Here are some cards that suggest the much broader requirements of legalize.

Legalize means to confirm by law and make lawful

McGRAW-HILL LEGAL 07 [Burton's Legal Thesaurus, William C. Burton. Used with permission
of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/legalize]
legalize verb approve, authorize, bring into conformity with law, confirm, confirm by law, decree by law, enact by
law, ferre, legislate, legitimate, legitimatize, make lawful, make legal, order by law, permit by law, pronounce legal, sanction,
sanction by law, validate
See also: allow, approve, authorize, certify, confirm, constitute, establish, formalize, legitimate, notarize, pass, seal, validate

To make lawful by legal sanction

BUSINESS DICTIONARY 14 [http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/legalize.html]
legalize - To make enforceable, justifiable, or lawful by judicial or legislative sanction.

Make permissible by law

DICTIONARY.COM
legalize [lglz/] verb
verb: legalize; 3rd person present: legalizes; past tense: legalized; past participle: legalized; gerund or present participle: legalizing; verb: legalise;
3rd person present: legalises; past tense: legalised; past participle: legalised; gerund or present participle: legalising
1. make (something that was previously illegal) permissible by law . "a measure legalizing gambling in Deadwood"

To make legal or authorize

RANDOM HOUSE 14 [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/legalize]
legalize [lee-guh-lahyz] Show IPA
verb (used with object), legalized, legalizing.

to make legal; authorize.

Also, especially British, legalise.

The aff would have to take an act [determine by the areas chosen in the resolution] and make it legally
permissible and authorized. There are quality cards that suggest legalize does not allow for regulations on
the activity.

Legalize excludes the discretion to regulate

Supreme Court of Colorado 92 [IN THE MATTER OF THE TITLE, BALLOT TITLE AND
SUBMISSION CLAUSE APPROVED SEPTEMBER 4, 1991, WITH REGARD TO THE PROPOSED
INITIATED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT CONCERNING LIMITED GAMING IN MANITOU
SPRINGS, FAIRPLAY AND IN AIRPORTS. KATHY VERLO, Petitioner, and GEORGE L. JAMES,
RAYMOND DELLACROCE, and CHARLES SARNER, Respondents, and GALE NORTON, BILL
HOBBS and NATALIE MEYER, Title Setting Board., NO. 91SA359, 826 P.2d 1241; 1992 Colo. LEXIS
53; 16 BTR 133]
Turning to Verlo's claim, we

are satisfied that the Board's use of the term "legalize" in the title and in the ballot title and submission
clause correctly and fairly expresses the true intent and meaning of the proposed constitutional amendment .
The word "legalize" means "to make legal" or "to give legal validity or sanction to." Webster's Third New
International Dictionary 1290 (1986); see also Black's Law Dictionary (6th ed. 1990) (legalize means "to make legal or
lawful" or "to confirm or validate what was before void or unlawful "). In the context of the phrase "to
legalize limited gaming in the cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay," the word "legalize" expresses the sense that
these cities will be required to legislate so as to make limited gaming legal within their respective
municipalities.
Contrary to Verlo's argument, we do not construe the word "legalize" as somehow suggesting that the cities of Manitou
Springs and Fairplay [**11] will retain the discretion either to legalize or to prohibit limited gaming as they see fit.
The Board's decision to add a sentence to the summary stating that under the proposed constitutional amendment the cities of Manitou Springs
and Fairplay would be "required to enact certain ordinances to implement limited gaming" merely expands upon what is conveyed in the title and
in the ballot title and submission clause by the phrase "to legalize limited gaming in the cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay." Nothing in
the record persuades

us that the Board's choice of language in the title and in the ballot title and submission clause is in any
way misrepresentative of the true intent and meaning of the proposed constitutional amendment.
We accordingly affirm the ruling of the Board.

Finally, if the topic committee were to decide that the verb phrasing was awkward, there is evidence that
make legal would provide a way to say legalize

To Make Legal means to authorize or legalize

LEGAL DICTIONARY 12 [http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/make+legal]
make legal verb approve by law, authorize by law, bring into conformity with the law, confirm by law, decree
by law, enact by statute, enact into law, legalize, legislate, legittmatize by law, make lawful, order by law, pass into law, perrit
by law, pronounce by statute, ratify, sanction by common law, sanction by law, sanction by the judiciary, validate

Modifiers
A modifier would be helpful with either of the verb choices. I believe the choice is based on whichever
verb phrase is chosen. Legalize would obviously be very broad and would lean itself to something like
nearly all or almost completely to give the aff some flexibility to deal with the decriminalize
counterplan. Contrary, decriminalize as the verb phrase would require a modifier to insure that the aff
took enough action. Largely or mainly would be good choices. If the topic is chosen, I would happily
write a resolution paper dealing with the different possibilities to modify both legalize and decriminalize.
The community could easily just pick up the substantially addiction from the past. So, Ill start there.
Decriminalize, as a verb phrase, will most likely demand a modifier so that small & insignificant changes
arent topical. I would push for the community to use decriminalize and/or legalize unless there is a
compelling reason to not do so. The larger areas will be easier to manage in a world where the aff takes a
larger set of actions than modifying the laws to be slightly less illegal.
There are contextually several uses of substantially decriminalized

California Marijuana laws

DAILY REPUBLIC 8 1 13 [Question of the week: Should marijuana use be legalized?,
http://www.dailyrepublic.com/opinion/pulsepoll/question-of-the-week-should-marijuana-use-belegalized/]
California has substantially decriminalized marijuana use over the past few decades. Is it time to legalize it?

Abortion laws that decriminalized

YOKOYAMA 91 [M Yokoyama, Abortion Policy in Japan: Analysis from the Framework of Interest
Groups, Kokugakuin Journal of Law and Politics Volume:29 Issue:1 Dated:(1991), 1-30,
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=132730]
During the period from 1929 to 1932, Japan experienced an overpopulation problem. In addition, the country's economic system was seriously
damaged during World War II. The Japanese government consequently adopted a policy of decreasing population and initiated various
democratization reforms. The Eugenic Protection Law of 1948 substantially decriminalized abortion . The law

contained two elements, one for the protection of motherhood and another for eugenic selection . The former
appealed to reformists and the latter to conservatives. In addition to providing for both voluntary and compulsory sterilization, the Eugenic
Protection Law prescribed legal abortion under certain conditions. A Eugenic Protection Committee had the authority to examine specific cases.
The number of abortions increased from 217 known to the police in 1946 before abortion was decriminalized to a high of 1,170,143
legal abortions in 1955. Between 1960 and 1988, the number of legal abortions decreased from 1,063,256 to 486,146 a year. Interest

groups
favoring the legalization of abortion included medical doctors and females. Interest groups against legal abortion included the
church and employers who were experiencing a shortage of labor. 25 references, 36 notes, and 2 tables

Sodomy laws were substantially decriminalized

ESKRIDGE 08 [William N. Eskridge, Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003,
p. 201]
By January I, 1979, the sodomy map of the United States looked completely different than it had before Stonewall. As seen in figure 7.1,
almost ninety per cent of the American people lived in the thirty-five statesjust short of the three-quarters

required to adopt a constitutional amendment, and about the same number that ratified the ERAthat had substantially
decriminalized consensual sodomy. Had the liberal morality advanced by Walt Whitman and Alfred Kinsey completely triumphed
over traditional morality? Had the sexual revolution confirmed that sex could be for pleasure alone, unconnected to marriage, procreation. or even
relationships? Had womens equality rendered traditional gender roles so obsolete that homosexual relations were losing their power to disgust?

Substantial decriminalization is across multiple fronts and includes only

confiscation
BENNETT & HOLLOWAY 05 [Bennett, Trevor, Holloway, Katy, Understanding Drugs, Alcohol
And Crime, McGraw-Hill International, Apr 1, 2005, pages 30-31]
Simple possession of drugs in The Netherlands has been substantially decriminalized. The penalty for
possession. preparation, sale, transportation or manufacture of Schedule II (soft) drugs, up to a quantity of 5 grams, is
currently confiscation, with no further action taken. According to the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2002), the
possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal use has been decriminalized. An operator or owner of a coffee shop may sell
cannabis and avoid prosecution as long as certain criteria are met that is, no more than 5 grams per person arc sold in any one transaction and
minors cannot enter the premises. Dutch policy in relation to alcohol also tends to be fairly lenient. The minimum legal age for the purchase of
alcohol is 16 for beer and wine and 18 for spirits. Alcoholic beverages arc for sale at liquor stores and super markets. However, supermarkets can
only sell beer, wine and alcoholic beverages with a strength of up to 13 percent alcohol (International Center for Alcohol Policy 2002). Drinkdriving laws are enforced at a blood alcohol concentration of 0.5 mg/ml and above. However, the penalties for more serious drugs are more
severe. The maximum penalty for possession of hard drugs for personal use is one years imprisonment and/or a fine of 11,250. The maximum
penalty for possession of hard drugs beyond personal use is imprisonment of 4 years and/or a fine of 45,000. The maximum penalty for sale of
hard drugs (i.e. heroin, cocaine and ecstasy) is 8 years and/or a fine of 45,000.

Im not particularly fond of substantially though. It seems trite at this point in the debate game. Other
possible options include:
Completely: This would force the affirmative to completely decriminalize. I like this as an option with
decriminalize because it is a much smaller change than legalize. It would force the aff to remove all laws
that criminalize without totally legalizing the act.
Nearly All: stealing a phrasing that was from the last few topics offers an alternative. Since there are
obviously a good number of laws that criminalize each. Giving the aff the flexibility of only having to
defend nearly all would seem a good middle ground. Nearly all was popular because it was vague
enough to allow some aff flexibility.

nearly all is vague

Zavala, 03 JD, University of San Francisco (Jacinto, 37 U.S.F. L. Rev. 493, Teachers Beware! You
May Be Liable Under Proposition 227: California Teachers Association v. State Board of Education,
Winter, lexis)
Every United States citizen has the right to know when he or she is exposed to liability. Unfortunately, the Ninth Circuit has denied this right to
California schoolteachers. The court's refusal to recognize that teachers have First Amendment rights heralds a dark day for teachers, especially
since the United States Supreme Court explicitly recognized such a right in both Hazelwood and Pickering. Moreover, the terms "nearly

all" and "overwhelmingly" are not words of common understanding. Most people would fail to arrive at the
same number when asked to define in percentages the terms "nearly all" and "overwhelmingly." The Ninth Circuit,
however, did not seem to think so.
Most troubling, however, is how clearly section 320 raises all three concerns that underlie the vagueness doctrine. First, the terms "nearly all" and
"overwhelmingly" back innocent teachers into a corner by not providing them with fair warning as to exactly what amount of non-English will
expose them to liability. Second, when this is coupled with the fact that school districts have wide latitude in designing programs to meet the
mandate of Proposition 227, it becomes virtually impossible for a teacher to protect herself against liability. Third, there is a high probability of
arbitrary and discriminatory application of the initiative, because a teacher from a particular district can easily be singled out by a parent who

believes that the law is being violated. In essence, Proposition 227 forces a teacher to curtail her exercise of free speech by preventing her from
speaking to a student in his native language, even if she feels it is in the student's best interest to do so.

However, nearly all didnt create an impossible neg burden because the best legal definitions all
suggested it was within the range of being all.

Nearly means almost or within a little

Corpus Juris, 1932 Volume 45, p. 579
NEARLY. A term purely relative in its meaning [Cogswell v. Bull, 29 Cal. 320, 325] defined as almost, within a
little [Webster D.]

AND, this would force the aff to lift all but one or two laws, which would be useful for avoiding PICS out
of very small changes that leave one or two laws on the books.

Nearly all means 100% minus one or two exceptions

Rodgers and Cooper, 06 professor of counseling at Strathclyde University (Brian and Mick, Proposed
Scoring Scheme for Qualitative Thematic Analysis,
www.strath.ac.uk/Departments/counsunit/docs/art_QTA.doc)
Drawing on the work of psychotherapy researchers Robert Elliott, Clara Hill and colleagues, the
following scheme has been proposed for the write up of qualitative thematic analysis when describing the
weighting of codes or categories (i.e. the number of interviews that the code/category appeared in). The
intention is to use plain English terms to describe the frequency of occurrence. For example the term
around half is used to describe 50% plus or minus one interview, and nearly all is used to describe
100% minus one or two interviews.

Passive Voice
I didnt set out to write this paper with the plan of dealing with the passive voice. I certainly didnt come
up with the idea for a resolution while contemplating how to shift to passive voice as a community.
While I am personally ambivalent about it, Im also obviously not going to hash out the pros and cons of
passive voice in this paper.
However, I will say that if a goal is to make sure there are passive voice options that make sense on the
resolution ballot, then this area provides several opportunities that could use whatever action stem the
committee puts in the options:
- One or more of the following ought not be federal crimes:
- Laws in the U.S. providing criminal penalties for one or more of the following activities should be
abolished:
- One or more of the following should be made legal:
- Laws in the U.S. providing criminal penalties for one or more of the following activities should be
abolished/repealed:
One benefit of this area is that because the topic is laws, it would still give the negative predictable disad
ground connected to agent action, and agent centered change while preserving the benefits of passive
action.

Aff & Neg Ground

Affirmative Ground
The affirmative ground on the topic would stem from the direct action of ending the criminalization of
certain activities combined with the benefits of legalization in each particular area. The sections below
will go into detail on the benefits of each particular area. This section will be a brief list of advantages
stemming from acts of legalization or decriminalization.
In general though, both aff and neg ground center around a certain set of questions. Importantly:
-Is this an act that should be prohibited by the government?
-Does government prohibition work? Or just drive activities underground?
First, and hopefully most significantly, the prison industrial complex should provide ample critical,
policy, and personal affirmative advantage ground. The search term prison industrial complex produces
a wealth of literature that could make aff advantage ground fruitful throughout the year.

Prison has become an industry

PELAEZ 3 31 14 El Diario-La Prensa, New York and Global Research [Vicky Pelaez, The Prison
Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?, Global Research,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-states-big-business-or-a-new-form-ofslavery/8289]
Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a
new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million
mostly Black and Hispanic are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have
invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They dont have to worry about strikes or
paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent
because of family problems; moreover, if they dont like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country.
According to California Prison Focus, no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens. The figures show that the

United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which
has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the worlds
prison population, but only 5% of the worlds people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2
million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000
inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.
What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners?
The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this

income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand
their workforce. The system feeds itself, says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison
industry of being an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps.

The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors
are on Wall Street. This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites,
and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies,
investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of
colors.

According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military
helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war
supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove
assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts,
medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

It has become a system of profit

SHAMMAS 1 10 14 Freelancer for Huffington, 1L at Harvard Law [Michael
Shammas, End the Prison-Industrial Complex, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-shammas/end-theprison-industrial-complex_b_4561459.html]
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to send someone to prison -- deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and so on -but profit is not among them. Unfortunately, it is an obscenely large reason that American prisons today house
more inmates than any other country on this planet.
If that doesn't trouble you, it should. A nation that prides itself on freedom is, paradoxically, the world's largest
jailer. By some measures, the American incarceration rate is a whopping 743 per 100,000, well above the second largest jailer's (Russia, at 577).
Twenty-five percent of the world's prisoners are American. There are perhaps more prisoners in America than in all of
Europe -- a continent with twice our population.
While there are numerous culprits behind this trend, especially draconian sentences for nonviolent drug
offenses, the most troubling by far is an increasingly privatized prison system that makes money off rampant criminalization and the hiking up
of more and more sentences to levels that were previously unheard of.
Why is it troubling? Because introducing profit into the criminal

justice calculus means lobbyists are pushing

Washington to expend public resources for private interests . To put it bluntly, there are people hoping to imprison more
people simply so that they can make more cash. Freedom lost is money gained.
Perhaps the worst aspect here is that, like the military-industrial complex, the general public is basically unaware of what a profitable business
this unsavory thing has become or, indeed, that private prisons even exist. Consider the introduction to a recent Salon article:
Imagine living in a country where prisons are private corporations that profit from keeping their beds stocked at, or near, capacity and the
governing officials scramble to meet contractual 'lockup quotas.' Imagine that taxpayers would have to pay for any empty beds should crime rates
fall below that quota. Surprise! You already live there.
In Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, author Jeremy Scahill outlines the parallel problems that arise in the
context of military privatization. When mercenary companies profit from conflict, the government -- a public institution -- goes to war for private
reasons. The U.S. begins fighting wars not because of national interests, but instead because of corporate interests, for lobbyists with private
interests push the public mechanisms of society to do their bidding. A hardworking blue-collar guy from Kansas thus pays taxes to fuel a war -- or
even gives his life in a war -- that was largely pushed for by military contractors who stand to profit.

Parallel concerns involving the tension between public and private goals arise from the prison-industrial
complex. Prisons serve a public function, yet the privatization of prisons means that a small, wealthy
group's private interests will have effects that touch the rest of us and that are antithetical to legitimate
public goals. According to a Mother Jones article, for example:
Occupancy requirements... are common practice within the private prison industry. A new report by In the Public Interest, an
anti-privatization group, reviewed 62 contracts for private prisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In the Public Interest
found that 41 of those contracts included occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and
100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full.
In addition to draining state coffers with unreasonable contracts, Corrections Corporation of America and other private prison companies
motivated by higher profit margins have lobbied for mandatory minimums, "three-strike" laws, and "truth-in-sentencing" laws that drive up the
prison population. Thus, one man's incarceration -- his ruined life -- is another man's livelihood. This is obscene.
American lives and freedom are not mere goods to be slapped with a price tag and bartered away . It is time

to end the prison-industrial complex and to place the administration of prisons back where it belongs: the
state.

The Prison Industrial Complex is central to maintaining systems of privilege

CRITICAL RESISTANCE 14 [WHAT IS THE PIC? WHAT IS ABOLITION?,
http://criticalresistance.org/about/not-so-common-language/]
The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use
surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.
Through its reach and impact, the PIC helps and maintains the authority of people

who get their power through

racial, economic and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through
the PIC, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people,

queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal , delinquent, or deviant.
This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces;
helping earn political gains for tough on crime politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social
and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US.

Some advantages related to the prison system would involve the resources spent on creating that system.
For example, the resource trade-off advantage based on focusing on other crimes, as well as the court clog
advantage centered on opening up the courts for more important cases would be fertile link ground for the
aff to explore.
Second, there is a great amount of literature dealing with federalism issues and federal criminal law. For
example, Garnetts The New Federalism, the Spending Power, and Federal Criminal Law, discusses a
large number of cases that cover states rights issues for prosecuting crimes. A topical affirmative would,
in theory, require the federal government to decriminalize an area where state laws existed.
Finally, there should be plenty of critical aff ground. For those interested in talking about crimes,
criminal behavior in society, and the way we normalize behavior, this would be the topic. Whether
Foucault, Critical Race Theory, Critical Legal Studies, etc., the possibilities are certainly fruitful. The aff
gets to say the way the prison system works should be examined with some great popular places to begin
that defense.
A few issues that arose with aff ground as I was writing and talking to people are worth discussing:

But what about the states counterplan?

First and foremost, a pox on the states counterplan. The notion that a topic would provide great debates
that people would feel comfortable discussing but the states counterplan makes it moot is the best
argument for the elimination of it from debate [death to the states counterplan ed lee edit]. If someone
feels strongly that a topic would be great but for the states counterplan, that person should not be voting
for that states counterplan.
Despite all that, the states counterplan would force the affirmative to write advantages around the reasons
why federal laws are bad. Current marijuana legalization literature discusses the commerce clause
justifications for federal action as well as prosecution by federal workers.

But what about the politics disad?

Please, lets stop worrying about the politics disad.
There are a surprising number of articles that would defend a political stance in favor of less criminal
procedures. Picking any topic based on the politics disad seems flawed logic at this point. The debate
community was able to survive aff debates on the ag subsidies topic, at a point when the politics disad
was far more popular, it certainly seems plausible at this point.

Is the advantage ground in depth enough?

It is hard to provide a compelling answer to this that a simple google search wouldnt do a better job of
answering. There is a plethora of legal, scholarly, philosophical, and blog literature on the subject of the
pros and cons of legalization of marijuana. There are classes taught at major universities solely on the
subject of the legalization of prostitution. I have little doubts about the ability of the community to
sustain a year of high quality researched debates on these subjects.

What about state pre-emption?

One of the concerns expressed by people is that there would be strong arguments that even if the federal
government legalized something, the states would still have laws making it illegal. First, I think that this
is some solid aff/neg debate ground. One interpretation of the topic would be that the aff has the
flexibility of saying that the aff is a constitutional amendment type change that would overrule and/or
preempt state laws on the question.

Negative Ground
This should be the biggest area of concern when it comes to voting for a decriminalization topic paper.
Two caveats are in order:
First, concern about what the neg has to say should be decreased a good bit. Negative ground has reached
a place where there is always something new, process-y, critical, or specific to say to just about any
affirmative on the topic. Though, obviously, that is a matter of opinion and perspective.
Second, the best neg ground is the neg ground about the specific act of the affirmative. My expectation
for this topic is one where there are a smaller number of large affirmatives with great advantage ground.
The best negative response should be specific to each area in which the aff is defending. The marijuana
neg should look very different from the prostitution neg. Those two should look quite different from the
on-line gambling neg. While there should be some overlap see below for the most part, allowing the
neg to engage in in-depth research about each act of decriminalization would be a great way to improve
debates. Decriminalizing marijuana in response to the online gambling aff would solve most of the
generic legal system defenses anyway, allowing the neg to target their negative strategies and narrow
down defendable aff ground.
A list, and discussion, of the possible things the negative could say is in order:
First, states based solvency deficit. Most lawyers who responded to the topic mentioned a concern with
overlapping state and federal laws. Many states have, and will continue, to maintain laws criminalizing
activities well after the federal government passes their own laws. The aff will need to research and
defend that the change they make would trickle down to impact the changes at the state level. This is
both good aff and neg ground to explore. The other possibility in this area would relate to the states
counterplan as it is meant to be. There is a strong argument for state legalization, or partial legalization
while maintaining a federal moratorium see the discussion of corporatization of activities below.
Second, movements disad uniqueness is the most popular result for research efforts into a majority of
these areas. Marijuana, organ sales, prostitution, and on-line gambling have all been made quasi-legal
[more on that in each area section]. That change is coming, and will get here, is a powerful argument that
will solve the affirmative in many instances.
As an aside, this topic avoids the legalization coming now in every single one of the areas. The thing
that prevents case debate has always been a lock of topic uniqueness. While there are moves towards
legalization the aff and neg ground is clearly a line drawn in the sand not legalized now.
Third, economic based disads would be popular. The prison-industrial system is a strong economic force
in the country. Prison-labor helps sustain many practices. This may, to some degree, include a discussion
of the prison system and the economic good it does the country. It may also simply be a legal structure
good type argument.
Fourth, and similarly, the kritik of economics would obviously be a strong one, as most changes to
criminal law would be made in such a way to benefit the rich. The other side of criminalization is often a
fine or fee based system of legal regulation. The market would also, obviously, be free to intervene into
the newly legalized activities.

Fifth, market interventions into currently illegal activities is a very popular set of negative arguments.
Essentially, once an activity is legal, someone will attempt to make a profit off of the activity. So, for
example, Big Marijuana companies, online-gambling mega-sites, and of course, the McDonaldization of
prostitution are all possible areas for negative ground. The current legal gray area allows activities to
happen without the fear of corporate control.
Sixth, the core argument that the activity of each area is bad would be fruitful ground. Though, there is
also a solid set of literature debating the effectiveness of legal penalties.

Criminal sanctions deter

Robinson & Darley 04 1University of Pennsylvania Law School 2Princeton
University [Does Criminal Law Deter? A Behavioural Science Investigation, Paul H. Robinson1 and
John M. Darley2, Oxford J Legal Studies (SUMMER) 24 (2): 173-205. doi: 10.1093/ojls/24.2.173]
Having a criminal justice system that imposes sanctions no doubt does deter criminal conduct. But available
social science research suggests that manipulating criminal law rules within that system to achieve heightened deterrence
effects generally will be ineffective. Potential offenders often do not know of the legal rules . Even if they do, they
frequently are unable to bring this knowledge to bear in guiding their conduct , due to a variety of situational, social,
or chemical factors. Even if they can, a rational analysis commonly puts the perceived benefits of crime greater than its perceived costs, due to
a variety of criminal justice realities such as low punishment rates . These conclusions are reinforced by
studies of crime rates following rule changes. Many show no change in deterrent effect. Those that purport
to show a deterrent effect commonly have persuasive non-deterrence explanations, such as a change in incapacitative effect. The few studies that
segregate deterrent and incapacitative effects tend to reinforce the conclusion that rule formulation has a deterrent effect only in those unusual
situations in which the preconditions to deterrence exist. Even there, the deterrent effects are quite minor and unpredictable, hence inadequate
grounds to influence criminal law rule making.

While others disagree

An Act being illegal motivates actors

LEROCH 13 Institute of Politics and Economics, University of Mainz [Martin A.
Leroch, Punishment as Defiance: Deterrence and Perverse Effects in the Case of Expressive Crime,
CESifo Economic Studies (2013), doi: 10.1093/cesifo/ift009]
Expressive crime contrasts with instrumental crime in that delinquents do not seek material benefits. Law

breakers are motivated by

the desire to make a statement, possibly against majority attitudes in the society. Fighting expressive
crime is complicated by this fact in that increasing intervention may have counter effects . In this article, I
present a model of expressive crime. Delinquents are motivated to perform the illegal action because it transmits a signal. If the punishment
associated with the crime affects the value of this signal positively, an increase in punishment may serve as defiance, and not as deterrence.
Accordingly, the number of law violations may increase if those defied outnumber the deterred. Throughout the analysis, I refer to the case of
graffiti spraying in Germany. It has been argued that this case offers an example for an increase in law violations after an increase in available
punishment. This claim is discussed with reference to available data. Implications for other forms of expressive crime are drawn. (JEL codes:
K14, K42, D03)

Seventh, the current respect for the legal system and police work in general, could be considered abysmal.
People simply are ignoring many of the laws prohibiting these activities.

Legal legitimacy occurs when people respect the laws

JACKSON, BRADFORD et al 12 Professors of Criminology [Why do People Comply
with the Law? Legitimacy and the Influence of Legal Institutions, Jonathan Jackson*, Ben Bradford,

Mike Hough, Andy Myhill, Paul Quinton and Tom R. Tyler, Methodology Institute, Br J Criminol (2012)
52 (6): 1051-1071.]
Abstract
This paper extends Tylers procedural justice model of public compliance with the law. Analysing

data from a national probability

sample of adults in England and Wales, we present a new conceptualization of legitimacy based on not just the
recognition of power, but also the justification of power . We find that people accept the polices right to
dictate appropriate behaviour not only when they feel a duty to obey officers, but also when they believe
that the institution acts according to a shared moral purpose with citizens . Highlighting a number of different routes by
which institutions can influence citizen behaviour, our broader normative model provides a better framework for explaining why people are
willing to comply with the law.

This abstract is about a report on the reasons why people generally respect the legitimacy of legal power
and respect the policing of activities. When immortal or illogical laws are part of the legal culture it
makes it more difficult to have other effective laws. This could easily be either aff or neg ground in terms
of legal legitimacy and the enforcement of other laws on the books.
Eighth, the fines counterplan has been discussed in legal and sociology literature for decades. These
counterplans would change the criminal penalty from one of jail time to one of a financial fee. The
easiest way to think about it is that smoking marijuana would be more like a parking ticket and less like
murder. Smoke a joint, pay a fine. One of the original works on fees as a punitive system, by Gillespie,
discusses the lack of fines in the US legal system. Depending on the verb choice legalization vs
decriminalization the fines counterplan or fines advantage would be available.

An original study about the need for more fines in the United States
ROBERT W. GILLESPIE 81 [International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice,
Volume 5, Issue 2, 1981]
Rising crime rates within traditional sanctioning patterns have resulted in a search for alternatives to
incarceration in order to control both the economic and the social (humanitarian) costs of punishment. The paper
explores this response in four countries: England, Germany, Sweden, and the United Statesall modern, industrial democracies.
The paper focuses upon the response in terms of the role accorded monetary penalties as an alternative to
incarceration. This role is analyzed in terms of the actual use of fines relative to incarceration, as a sentencing disposition for traditional
crimes. The major finding is that among the four countries the United States accords fines a very minor role.
The reasons for this difference are explored and it is concluded that the use of fines in the United States when compared to
European experienceappears to be far below the level that would minimize the economic and social cost of
punishment.

Fees and fines as an alternative to prison

OMalley, P. 11, Politicizing the case for fines. Criminology & Public Policy, 10: 547553. doi:
10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00736.x
From within the neoliberal heartland, Gary Becker (1974) made

a case for fines as the default sanction, in which

imprisonment remained only for those unable or unwilling to pay. In addition to the arguments made by Bentham 200
years ago, Becker made a claim that those who had served prison terms remained anathema in the eyes of
fellow citizens becauseand only an economist could argue thisinstead of paying their debt to society, they had
incurred a greater debt through the costs of imprisonment. Although this reasoning is not the main driver of discrimination toward exprisoners, his point is symptomatic. The timing of the introduction of criminal justice fees, from the 1970s on,
suggests that the neoliberal user-pays mentality has been at work. Becker's radical proposal for fines as
the universal sanction has been ignored. Feesnot fineshave been developed and imposed in line with a

neoliberal user-pays mentality, whereas prison has been retained as the principal sanction in line with
neoconservatives preferences; it is a historic compromise that makes it important to not pass over the difference between fines and fees.

Its a timely academic debate

OMalley, P. 11, Politicizing the case for fines. Criminology & Public Policy, 10: 547553. doi:
10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00736.x
Of course, fines are punitive and not corrective. Beckett and Harris (2011) point this out clearly enough, but as noted previously, it

would be
entirely misleading to read this as a critique of fines being used to displace short terms of imprisonment .
No doubt it is well worth rehearsing arguments concerning the merits and demerits of fines versus other sanctions. But no such public or
serious criminological debate has taken place to date in the United Statesand the handful of advocates
of fines referred to by Beckett and Harris were all in academic journals , and none were more recent than approximately
20 years ago. I would suggest that the time is both opportune and overdue for American criminologists to take up
an academic and public politics for the fine.
Ninth, changing the penalty, maintaining part of the penalty, or modifying the way the law is enforced are
all counterplan options. Depending on the verb phrase chosen, PICS and alternate mechanisms should be
the most popular version of negative strategies. The best literature on marijuana legalization, for
example, debates the different ways each state has gone about legalization and the pros and cons of each.
Full legalization versus medical permission is one example of an almost endless number of possibilities.
Tenth, general prison reform should be a part of the negatives generics at the beginning of the topic. The
best affirmative ground should center around indictments of the prison system. However, those affs will
certainly be focusing on a symptom and not the cause. A larger overhaul of the way the laws are
enforced, or jail time is assigned would be a competitive alternative to a majority of aff advantages.
Finally, some discussion of generics:
The neg can still read the politics and midterms disad. Many of the affs would make liberal interest
groups happy. Many that were excited to elect Obama would be happy to see the changes in the criminal
system. I wont go into any greater detail, but, the politics disad would still exist on this topic. [actually,
the politics disad would be quite good on this topic, but even I dont vote on topics because of the politics
disad].
The government could still be criticized as the site for change, as the neg could say laws shouldnt exist.

The Areas

Introduction
This is obviously the interesting part of this topic. While legalization versus decriminalization will form
a foundation of how these debates occur, the areas will form the advantage ground, disad ground, and
critical literature that gets debated. The popularity of the topic should stem from the fact that there should
be and can be enough areas included that novices and national champions alike are interested in
researching and discussing one of the issues. This area for debate was originally conceived of in an
attempt to find areas that debaters would find worthy of their time, research, and skills.
My hope is that the verb phrase that is chosen is broad enough to allow us to pick a large number of areas.
I have included an expectation for the topic area at the bottom that speaks to the verb stem. However,
the areas of the topic are obviously something that should be phrased properly, vetted, and put to a vote.
Now, one distinction between the areas is that many of them are federal crimes. Others include state and
local laws [a deeper discussion of that is in the aff & neg section]. However, depending on the areas it
would be possible to craft the resolution to say Federal-State-Local or just federal or just laws in order
to make area for the areas of interest. An alternative wording for a version of the topic that includes a lot
of areas might be:
One or more of the following ought not be a federal, state, or local crime in the United States:
So, presented in categories, and alphabetical within those areas.

Thoughts on the Areas

I got carried away with this section. It is hard to know what counts as a good area. I feel comfortable in
knowing that there are solvency advocates and negative authors for each of the areas in the Should be
Included and the Should be Considered sections. I trust that the topic committee will do a thorough
job of vetting those areas and giving us a great set of voting options.
With that being said, I would encourage people, if this were the winning area, to write papers in defense
of including certain other areas. The beauty of legalization or fully decriminalize as possible verb
stems is that they are narrow enough to justify the inclusion of numerous areas.
In terms of choosing the number of areas and size of the topic step one is choosing the verb stem. For
example:
Substantially decriminalized would result in a small number of areas maybe just marijuana,
prostitution, organ sales, and suicide.
fully legalize would result in a large number of areas include a dozen or more, since there would only
be one aff for each area.
My proposal is for a topic that decriminalizes the four main areas I have listed. Including additional areas
should be a topic committee and community based voted. As such, here are my thoughts on categories of
areas:

Must be Included
Marijuana
Online Gambing
Organ & Tissue Sales
Physician Assisted Suicide
Prostitution

Should be Considered
Concealed Carry
Drinking Age
HIV Status
Immigration [*if the action is broad enough]
Narcotics
Public Order Offenses

Need Further Exploration and Justifications

Abortion Offenses
Drug Use in Sports

Should be Included

Marijuana
Introduction
I kept this area short because while I think it will make for some fantastic debates, I also think that most
members of the debate community are excited about debating this area. I cannot endorse a version of this
topic where marijuana use is not included.

Aff Ground
This should come as no surprise, there are a lot of solvency advocates for marijuana. For example, the
President.
Obama wants the aff but admits there is neg ground
WEBSTER 14 The Progressive Staff Writer [Stephen C. Webster, Obama Calls on Congress to
Decriminalize Marijuana, http://www.progressive.org/obama-stands-by-deeply-contradictory-position-onmarijuana]
President Barack Obama

said Friday that he would like Congress to undo "the incarceration model" that American
law enforcement has applied to marijuana users for decades, in hopes that a new approach will help address
profound racial disparities the nation's drug laws helped create.
Despite his administrations official position that marijuana is a Schedule I substance and every bit as harmful as heroin, LSD and Peyote,
Obama told CNN reporter Jake Tapper that hes standing by his recently stated view that the drug is no more

harmful than alcohol.

I stand by my belief, based, I think, on scientific evidence, that marijuana, for casual user, is subject to abuse just like alcohol is and should be
treated as a public health problem and challenge, he said.
Tapper also challenged the President on whether he would take executive action to ensure that marijuana is listed with other controlled substances
relative to its harm, instead of on the Drug Enforcement Administrations (DEA) Schedule I, which is supposedly reserved for the most
disorienting and debilitating substances.
Obama, however, punted on Tappers question. What is and isnt a Schedule I narcotic is a job for Congress, he said. Its not Its not
something by ourselves that we start changing. No, there are laws undergirding those determinations.
The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) makes it abundantly clear how drugs are added and removed from the

DEAs schedule. The Secretary of Health and Human Services must review the scientific and health
information available and recommend a change to the Attorney General, which the CSA says shall be
binding on the nations top law enforcement official. It does not mention congressional approval for rescheduling substances.
The President also ignored a follow-up question on whether he would support rescheduling marijuana, and instead reiterated his recent statements
to The New Yorker, emphasizing that enforcement of the CSA has resulted in a massive racial disparity in arrest statistics.
I think that is a problem, he said. Were going to see what happens in the experiments in Colorado and Washington. The Department of
Justice, you know, under Eric Holder, has said that we are going to continue to enforce federal laws. But in those states, we recognize that we
dont have the resources, the federal government does not have the resources, to police whether somebody is smoking a joint on the corner. And
we are trying to provide them structures to make sure that, you know, big time drug traffickers, the spillover effect of the violence, potentially, of
a drug trade are not creeping out with this experiment that is taking place.

Obama added that he wants to deal with some of the criminal penalty issues surrounding marijuana,
which would allow the government to focus on other methods for discouraging all varieties of substance abuse. The incarceration model that
weve taken, particularly around marijuana, does not seem to have produced the kinds of results that weve set, he said.
But I do offer a cautionary note, and I said this in the interview, the President warned. Those who think legalization is a

panacea, I think they have to ask themselves some tough questions too. Because if we start having a
situation where big corporations with a lot of resources and distribution and marketing arms are suddenly
going out there peddling marijuana, then the levels of abuse that may take place are going to be higher.

There are numerous law reviews, scholarly articles, and think tanks dedicated to this issue. The
advantage ground will be thorough and diverse.
Interestingly, the current movement towards decriminalization and medical legalization in states makes it
ripe for good agent debates. The states debate is ripe for discussion because many states have begun
legalizing marijuana, yet the federal laws remain on the book. The aff still has plenty of ground because
absent federal action, the status quo is a legal limbo
Federal law key

USA TODAY 10 29 12 [Editorial: Don't legalize pot just for the high of it,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/10/29/legalize-marijuana-pot-states/1666755/]
But the fact that legal pot has growing momentum doesn't mean it's a good idea, or that it's inevitable:

Marijuana is still illegal under federal law . Those who can grow or sell pot legally under state law can
be, and have been, busted by the feds. Although the Obama administration ordered a hands-off policy in 2009 for
medical marijuana operations in compliance with state laws, there's no sign that federal drug enforcers would wink at fullblown legalization.
The Obama administration remains strongly opposed. Supporters of state legalization want this confrontation on the grounds that it will change
federal law. Maybe, but a more likely scenario is that states will end up in costly litigation while pot users are left

in legal limbo.
Steven B. Duke writes some quality evidence about possible advantage ground and solvency evidence
here: Steven B. Duke, The Future of Marijuana in the United States, Oregon Law Review, 2013, 91 Or. L.
Rev. 1301
Even the Cato Institute is on board, for very different reasons. Boaz, Doug, Drug Decriminalization has
failed? http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/drug-decriminalization-has-failed
There are also numerous sources dedicated to responding to critics of decriminalization. For example,
http://kzooamd.weebly.com/common-arguments-against-decriminalization.html.
Im not going to go into great detail on this section because I think most people can envision what these
affs would look like in a debate round.

Negative Ground
Most people would be far more concerned with the negative ground versus the marijuana aff, and
rightfully so. It will be a strong affirmative. While marijuana bad disad wont win many debate rounds.
There are still a large number of studies being done that suggest heavy marijuana use is bad. For
example, recent studies by Kings College, Duke, and USC all suggest the neg is not without arguments.

Weed makes you dumb and gives you cancer

USA TODAY 10 29 12 [Editorial: Don't legalize pot just for the high of it,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/10/29/legalize-marijuana-pot-states/1666755/]
Modern marijuana can be very powerful, potent enough to make it dangerous to drive or operate other
machinery under the influence. Backers of legal pot wisely advocate tough penalties for driving while
stoned, but do we really want to add another widely available drug to roads where alcohol already causes mayhem? And do we want to worry
(more than we already do) that pilots or train engineers or others are high when they come to work? That would be more likely if pot were legal.

"Reefer madness" scare stories killed the credibility of anti-marijuana crusaders decades ago, but that doesn't mean marijuana is a benign drug,
especially for children. A study by Duke University and King's College London found that kids who start smoking as

teenagers and become "persistent users" at least four times a week typically lose 8 IQ points and never
get them back. Beyond IQ points, many lose motivation to succeed in school.
Doctors have split over whether marijuana causes lung cancer the way smoking cigarettes does, though

evidence seems to
be accumulating that it could. A recent study at the U niversity of S outhern C alifornia found a link between
recreational pot use and testicular cancer in men from their teens to the mid-30s.
Advocates of legalization make some good points, particularly about the waste of law enforcement resources in enforcing marijuana laws, and the
way the illegal market enriches criminal gangs and drug cartels.
Their arguments demonstrate how imperfect the current legal regime is, but they downplay the risks of legalization. Making marijuana available
for medical use is a humane and sensible policy, despite the likelihood of wider use and abuse. Doing the same thing simply to allow adults to get
high legally isn't worth the inevitable cost.

The negative would not be without a solid literature base to answer almost all of the advantages of
legalization. The Baker Institute for example:
Pro Marijuana myths should be examined closely
Baker Institute 12 [Marijuana: A case against legalization, Posted on September 25, 2012 | By James
A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, http://blog.chron.com/bakerblog/2012/09/marijuana-a-caseagainst-legalization/]
Fast-forward to today and much

of the mythmaking and exaggeration comes from a powerful lobby whose aim is
to legalize marijuana. Capitalizing on the unfounded myths and hysteria of the past, pro-marijuana campaigners
conveniently ignore the fact that todays marijuana hardly resembles that of the 1960s . (Producers of the
drug have learned to increase the psychoactivity of the marijuana with a much higher concentration of THC.) Supporters of
legalization laud marijuana for its harmlessness, its revenue-generating potential and its medical wonders.
These claims deserve closer scrutiny.
This is just one, of many, articles that do a great job of debunking many of the benefits of legalization,
which would create a great deal of case depth. There are also, other, excellent lines of attack on all sides
of the legalization and use link. Many argue, for example, that legalization would not increase use
[http://norml.org/aboutmarijuana/item/marijuana-decriminalization-its-impact-on-use-2] which could
answer a good number of advantages.
In terms of dealing with the criminalization generic advantages, literature discussing the war on drugs and
specifically marijuana criminalization provide excellent See also, Taylor E. Whitten, J.D. Candidate,
University of Iowa College of Law, 2014; B.S.F.S., Georgetown University, 2008. [Under the Guise of
Reform: How Marijuana Possession Is Exposing the Flaws in the Criminal Justice Systems Guarantee of
a Right to a Jury Trial, Iowa Law Review, Vol. 99:919]
There are plenty of other possible ways for the negative to attack marijuana affs. A brief discussion of
some of those is below..
The movements disad has strong uniqueness. The US is certainly moving towards a decriminalized
system that would solve all of the affs advantages.
Movement success now

LIBERTY VOICE 14 [Medical Cannabis to See National Legalization,

http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/medical-cannabis-to-see-national-legalization/]

The movement to get medical cannabis nationally legalized has grown by leaps and bounds in just the last
few months. Many states have seen legislation created to make the medicinal oil and tinctures available to sick patients, both
adults and children who suffer from seizures, tumors and various cancers among other ailments. Most notably, The Mommy
Lobby has seen more success with their initiatives to legalize marijuana for medicinal use. The Mommy
Lobby is backed by the power of changing public attitudes regarding the herb. This group of mothers who are
fighting for the right to medicate their sick children with cannabis derivatives, are finding sympathy with lawmakers as they reveal their tales of
struggle and misery in dealing with the various problems that come with having sick and seizure prone children. They speak passionately about
the difficulty in obtaining the medical cannabis that has been proven to almost completely halt the seizures and suffering felt by their loved ones.
A medical marijuana bill was just recently passed in Georgias House of Representatives. As the bill now heads to the
state senate, many parents wait with bated breath on the outcome there. Amazingly, house bill 885 passed by an overwhelming majority of 171-4.
This is further proof that medical cannabis is slowly but surely making its way to national legalization. Haleighs Hope Act is named after fouryear old Haleigh who suffers from hundreds of seizure attacks a day. This Act would allow for medical cannabis to be grown under very tight
restrictions in the state of Georgia. In the meantime, Haleigh and her mother will be moving to Colorado from Georgia where she can get
immediate access to the much needed cannabis oil treatment.
More than 2.3 million Americans are living with epilepsy and suffer from seizures that just can not be helped by modern medicines. Medical
marijuana is rapidly changing this but can only be as effective as the creating or changing of these laws will allow. Many patients and their
families are calling for the process to be sped up as many are dying for lack of accessible medication. Many families have been through medical
mazes, seeing specialist after specialist in their search for if not a cure, at least relief. Many of the 20 states that have legalized medical marijuana
have seen an influx of new potential residents, especially Colorado and Washington. Because of this growing phenomenon, several states are now
pushing for new initiatives to address this growing issue.
Colorado has been flooded with request for the oil or tincture, which is high in CBD but low in THC, which is the component that creates the
high found in the herb. The CBD component is of particular interest to researchers who are calling for laws that will allow for testing in
humans. It was discovered that THC almost completely eradicated the RIV virus in laboratory mice: RIV is almost identical to the HIV virus
found in humans. That is very encouraging news for many. However for treatment to be accepted by the medical community, more testing is
needed. Washington is beginning to feel the strong push from citizens across the nation who are clamoring for the much needed changes.Medical
Cannabis

As the momentum grows and more states are bearing witness to the success and validity of medicinal
marijuana, hope is also growing among those who have waited, for years in some cases, to see it legalized
across the board. As the demand grows, tens of thousands are being placed on waiting lists to obtain
access. Some states are moving faster than others to meet the demands of its constituents. As more and more of these
antiquated laws are removed and changed in states across the nation, lives are being saved and it will not
be long before medical cannabis sees national legalization happen for those in need.
Standard spillover arguments for the cannabis movement make it a viable negative strategy and a good
answer to a majority of the advantages affs will try and read.
There are also a number of scholarly and philosophical articles that discuss the monetizing and marketing
of marijuana. The Obama statement about legalization highlighted the concern with companies pushing
the use of marijuana onto the average consumer. Whether the negative chooses to use the neoliberalism
kritik to defend the status quo or an alternative, the big weed bad disad could be a great generic
disadvantage against the marijuana aff.
Generally, there are economic arguments to be had for both sides of the debate. For example, I could see
an in depth debate about commodity prices, taxes, and production benefits occurring.
Legalization has tax and commodity price concerns
Bloomberg 1 9 14 [Legal Weed's Strange Economics in Colorado, By Brian Bremner and Vincent
Del Giudice January 09, 2014, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-09/colorado-legalmarijuanas-strange-economics]
This is a blazing moment for American stoners. Colorado has just legalized

the commercial production, sale, and

recreational use of marijuana, while Washington State will begin its own pot liberalization initiative at the end of February. On Jan. 8,
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state would join 20 others and the District of Columbia in allowing the drug for medical purposes.

Libertarians and progressives are thrilled. Addiction specialists are anxious. And economists, well, theyre a little like
undergrads lost in a bong-induced thought experiment: One moment the economics of pot seem
beautifully elegant, then the real-world implications suddenly become bewilderingly complex.
The champions of marijuanas legalization have long argued that regulated sale of the drug would drive down
production costs and the retail price. The availability of cheaper, legal cannabis would generate precious
tax revenue and refocus drug enforcement efforts on more socially harmful narcotics such as cocaine, heroin, and
crystal meth. On the black market, a lot of folks are compensating drug dealers and everyone else in the supply
chain for the risk of arrest and incarceration, says Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. If
marijuana were fully legalized and you could grow it outdoors like any other commodity, the production
costs would plummet over 90 percent.
Standing in the way, Kilmer and economists say, are variables including state tax policies, the shifting
behavior of buyers and sellers, and contradictory drug laws nationwide . In Colorado, where authorities have levied
a 15 percent wholesale and 10 percent retail tax on marijuana transactions, the price of legal commercial-grade pot has
doubled to $400 an ounce since the start of the year, says Aaron Smith, executive director of the National
Cannabis Industry Association. Thats twice the price for medical marijuana at state dispensaries that
require a doctors prescription. On the black market, high-grade offerings are fetching $156 to $250 an ounce,
according to data compiled by Narcotic News.

That prevailing $400-per-ounce price is no doubt inflated by limited inventory and pent-up consumer
demand that may fade over time. To optimize profits, though, enterprising pot retailers will still have an
incentive to go high-end, specializing in more potent grades , promoting add-ons such as vaporizer refillable cartridges that
can be used for pot consumption, and conjuring up new products (cannabis-infused chocolate lava cake, anyone?). I dont think we should
expect the legal price to be that different from current [black market] prices, says Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron. People will
want to pay more for a quality product.
For policymakers, the challenge is getting the taxes right , says Kilmer at RAND. In Washington State, authorities will
impose a 25 percent excise tax on every phase of the newly liberalized market: production, processing, and final sale. Thats on top of standard
state sales tax of 8.75 percent. A consulting firm hired by the state projects these taxes will add 37 percent to the price. In Colorados Western
Slope region, Gregory Viditz-Ward, owner of a pot retailer called the Telluride Green Room, says he thinks the black market is going to come
back extremely strong, due to what he considers the high state cannabis tax.

The depth of solvency evidence and debate about alternative mechanisms for legalization would provide
the bulk of the neg ground on this topic. Depending on the topic wording, PICS that leave certain classes
illegal, or counterplans that exclude certain acts, would provide for in depth debates about the intricacies
of the legalization movement.
Other generic go to arguments for the negative will be great on this topic. From federalism to the politics
disad, there are great link arguments about any legal change the affirmative would advocate. Legalism
and CLS type generic kritiks would also obviously be fertile negative ground.
In terms of other critical ground, there are good gender specific articles that kritik the legalization
movement and the patriarchal industry of marijuana. Chapkis, Wendy. "The Trouble with Mary Jane's
Gender." Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 35.1 (2013). An argument that has been forwarded by
many in the pro cannabis movement [http://www.theweedblog.com/females-still-missing-from-themarijuana-community/].

Resolutional Wording
Im ambivalent about how it would be worded. Most of the literature references, use, sale, and
production or some combination of the three. There are lots of bills that have passed on the state level
that could be mirrored.

Washington State approved the production and sale of marijuana for medical and recreational use
http://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/marijuanainseattle.html
13-3405. Possession, use, production, sale or transportation of marijuana; classification
http://www.azleg.state.az.us/ars/13/03405.htm
An Act to tax and regulate the production, sale, and use of marijuana.
http://www.elections.alaska.gov/petitions/13PSUM/13PSUM-Proposed-Law.pdf
Colorado Law

Bloomberg 1 9 14 [Legal Weed's Strange Economics in Colorado, By Brian Bremner and Vincent
Del Giudice January 09, 2014, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-09/colorado-legalmarijuanas-strange-economics]
This is a blazing moment for American stoners. Colorado has just legalized

the commercial production, sale, and

recreational use of marijuana, while Washington State will begin its own pot liberalization initiative at the end of February. On Jan. 8,
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state would join 20 others and the District of Columbia in allowing the drug for medical purposes.

OTHER CITES
Kreit, Alex. "The Federal Response to State Marijuana Legalization: Room for Compromise?." Or. L.
Rev. 91 (2013): 1029-1337.

Online Poker
Background
Online gambling is a major industry that generates almost 30 billion in revenue annually. Despite that, it
is largely illegal and heavily regulated throughout the United States. There are advocates for major
reform and action on the federal level to legalize online gambling. Here are a few solvency advocates.
Congress should legalize to regulate.
STEWART & GRAY 11 [Stewart, David O., and L. L. P. Gray. "Online gambling five years after
UIGEA." Washington, DC: American Gaming Association (2011).]
The business of online gambling spans the globe and touches every corner of the United States. Worldwide,
online gambling is increasingly a legal and regulated activity that generates almost $30 billion of revenue
a year. In the United States, public policy on the subject has been schizophrenic. Online gambling is presently being
conducted domestically for pari-mutuel betting on horse races and for state lotteries, yet government policy has been hostile to
other forms of online gambling, and has included criminal prosecutions of online gambling operators and
their payment processing partners. Despite this government opposition, millions of Americans spend $4
billion every year to gamble online. Prosecutions against online gambling operators have driven the more
responsible offshore operators out of the U.S. market, leaving Americans to conduct their online
gambling through largely unregulated websites. In contrast, about 85 nations have chosen to legalize and
regulate online gambling. Numerous Western nations including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and some provinces in
Canada have created structures for tight regulation of the online gambling industry. This course provides
consumer protections for individuals while also generating jobs, economic opportunity and government revenue. Beginning with
careful confirmation of the identity of every online gambler, which is the foundation for effective
regulation, these nations employ technologies that effectively ensure:
That the games are played fairly, according to their rules, and pay off as promised;
That underage gamblers are excluded from play;
That people who struggle to control their gambling have access to tools to limit their deposits, bets, and
overall play, or even exclude themselves from gambling websites entirely;
That online gambling operators do not accept bets from jurisdictions that prohibit online gambling; and
That gambling websites are not used for money laundering and other illegal purposes.
Similar protections are now required for U.S.-based websites that take bets on horse racing or sell
subscriptions for state lottery tickets.
Drawing on these experiences, Congress has a unique opportunity to blend several approaches to Internet gambling to
achieve the greater good. First, it should reinforce law enforcement tools and proscriptions to protect
Americans from gambling websites that now operate from offshore jurisdictions with minimal or no regulation.
Second, it should authorize a state-focused program to license U.S.-based operators to offer online poker
only, preserving the ability of every state government to decide whether online poker should be available
within its borders. Third, it should ensure that tough regulation ensures the fairness of the games, excludes
underage gamblers, and provides tools for pathological gamblers to control their gambling. Such an
integrated policy would provide maximum protections to American citizens while generating new jobs,
economic opportunities and public revenues.
An introduction to a specific solvency advocate article.
WATSON et al 04 [Watson, Stevie, et al. "The legalization of internet gambling: A consumer
protection perspective." Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 23.2 (2004): 209-213.]

The complexities of Internet gambling limit congressional efforts to regulate its growth . Therefore,
legislative attempts to prohibit Internet gaming may undermine the protection mechanisms that were designed
to help people who are susceptible to the social and economic problems linked to gambling. The authors suggest that congressional
efforts to prohibit Internet gambling should be reassessed, and they recommend the legalization and
regulation of Internet gambling through existing land-based casinos. Finally, the authors present the regulatory
guidelines and cooperative policy initiatives that are necessary for such a proposition.
In terms of topic wording Internet Gambling would be a simple and definable phrase to legalize or
decriminalize

LIDELL et al 03 Assistant Prof of Business Law, Mississippi State, College of

Business and Industry [Liddell Jr, Pearson, et al. "Internet gambling: on a roll." Seton Hall Legis. J.
28 (2003): 315.]
Internet gambling is defined as the placing of real money bets using ones personal computer via the
Internet. Although revenues collected through online gambling sites represents only a fraction of total
gambling revenues, its growth potential is enormous.

Affirmative
The economic advantages would be huge. Alijani et al., argue that the US is being left out of the largest
industry in the world.
And, heres an advocate for heavy federal regulation and legalization

ROMOSER 13 Georgetown University Law Center, J.D. expected 2014; Columbia

University, B.A. 2005 [Romoser, James. "UNSTACKING THE DECK: THE LEGALIZATION OF
ONLINE POKER." Am. Crim. L. Rev. 50 (2013): 519-607.]
V. CONCLUSION
Americans have been playing online poker for fifteen years . All evidence suggests they will continue to
do so, regardless of whether their government tells them it is illegal . On Facebook--that trusty gauge of generational
appetites--the third-party application with the most total "Likes" is "Texas HoldEm Poker." n178 Its popularity is especially telling given that the
application does not even offer "real" poker: people can play the game, but only using digital chips with no monetary value. The app's

parent company, Zynga, is poised to start offering online poker for real money--as soon as lawmakers
allow it. n179
The legal trend certainly points in that direction. The Department of Justice has re-interpreted the Wire
Act as irrelevant to online poker. A federal district court has ruled that the Illegal Gambling Business Act
also does not apply. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act is ineffectual without an
applicable statute on [*543] which to rely. And the states, despite historically treating poker as an illicit "game of chance,"
are beginning to move toward explicit legalization. The best path forward is an interstate compact to
create a robust multi-state online poker network. A compact, as envisioned in this Note, would take advantage of the emerging
judicial certainty that online poker is legal under federal law. And it would, for the first time, allow American online poker to be fully regulated,
guaranteed safe, and properly taxed. As Mark Twain wrote, "There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected

in our country as poker." n180 Under a well-regulated interstate compact, the digital iteration of America's pastime would no longer be
neglected by America's policymakers.

Other advantage ground would include: Citizen foreign spending, Underground Economies, and personal
happiness/liberty issues. Many of the articles cited below go through each of these and develops an
economic, social, or moral justification for allowing online poker.

Negative
Gambling, and specifically online gambling, is not without its critics. There have been several studies
done, including one by Phillips et al., that online gambling is connected with other dangerous activities
like suicide.
Both Schopper and Mills, among others, argues that online gambling is the easiest way to launder money
to fund other illegal activities. That was, and remains, a major argument made in favor of continued
criminalization.
Additionally, many critics of gambling, such as McMulland and Rege, argue that online gambling
magnifies the vice of gambling.
The Cap kritik would probably be at its finest in criticizing online taxable systems of gambling money.
While I have not researched them myself, Martin Osborn assured me that they would be, really sweet.
Additionally, online casinos are a major threat to traditional casinos. Whether one wants to defend those
as economic institutions or as places for Native American revitalization, there is certainly a set of trade off
arguments.
Depending on the mechanism, alternative modes of legalization or decriminalization would be robust
given the number of solvency advocates and calls for federal action.

Citations
Abovitz, Ian. "Why the United States Should Rethink Its Legal Approach to Internet Gambling: A
Comparative Analysis of Regulatory Models That Have Been Successfully Implemented in Foreign
Jurisdictions." Temp. Int'l & Comp. LJ 22 (2008): 437.
Alijani, Ghasem S., et al. "Economic Impacts of Commercial Casinos and On-Line Gambling." c. 2002.
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Solutions to this Perplexing Problem." Miss. LJ 70 (2000): 375.
Gottfried, Jonathan. "The federal framework for Internet gambling." Rich. JL & Tech. 10 (2004): 26-53.
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McMullan, John L., and Aunshul Rege. "Online crime and internet gambling." Journal of Gambling
Issues (2010): 54-85.
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Phillips, David P., Ward R. Welty, and Marisa M. Smith. "Elevated suicide levels associated with
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Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006." S. Cal. Interdisc. LJ 17 (2007): 381.
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Consequences of a Monetary Control Scheme." Chap. L. Rev. 5 (2002): 303.
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American Gaming Association (2011).
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Watson, Stevie, et al. "The legalization of internet gambling: A consumer protection perspective." Journal
of Public Policy and Marketing 23.2 (2004): 209-213.
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Organ & Tissue Sales

Background
Demand for organ, eye, and tissue donation vastly exceeds availability. In the United States alone, over
120,000 people require lifesaving organ transplants. About eighteen die every day due to lack of
available organs. That doesnt even include the tens of thousands of corneas and eyes transplanted, and
the million-plus tissue transplants done every year, for a variety of purposes. The demand for organs,
eyes, and tissue is expected to continue rising.
Currently, organs and tissue are only legally obtained in the United States via voluntary or post-mortem
donation. The 1984 National Organ Transplantation Act prohibits compensation for donors, thereby
outlawing sale or bartering for organs. There is a large, international, underground market for illegal
organsobtained via sale, coercion, and theft. The WHO estimates that 20% of kidney transplants across
the globe are obtained illegally.
Allowing voluntary sale of organ and tissue is a proposed solution to the existing shortage. Proponents
discuss mechanisms with a range of permissiveness and centralization, from creating a national
bureaucracy to a full free market. Decriminalization would allow the affirmative to advocate for some
of these mechanisms.
Affirmative advantage ground takes a number of forms. An increased supply of organs and tissue would
save lives, provide sight, and supply tissue for other procedures, such as grafts and ovary transplants.
Researchers are studying new uses for organ and tissue, so the affirmative could have more speculative
advantages and discussions of medical technology as well. Available organs could also decrease health
care costs by freeing people from the need to use dialysis and other life-sustaining technologies over the
long term.
Proponents also argue that allowing voluntary sale could provide relief for poverty, as people would have
an option to sell an eye or a kidney for needed cash and services. There are also strong arguments that the
legal sale of organs would crowd out and therefore limit organized crime.
The core negative ground is to argue that allowing sale of organs and tissue creates an incentive for
people in poverty to harm their health due to financial desperation. Opponents of decriminalization argue
that structural inequality would functionally coerce people to sell parts of themselves in order to survive,
using the bodies of poor and minority populations as spare parts for the wealthy. Proponents of
decriminalization respond that illegal markets for organs already create that coercive incentive in an
unsafe and unregulated way, that organ sales are safe, and that the compensation received would reflect
the risk to the donor, and that the provision of organs to someone in need is itself worth the risk. There is
a deep debate in the literature about this, which would allow a quality discussion of inequality, markets,
and ethics. Monetizing body parts to meet an important need is a complex ethical issue which should
foster complex and evolving debates.
The negative also has access to ground about different ways to meet the organ shortage. Some suggest
more aggressive programs to obtain voluntary donors, such as increased education and the creation of
better information sharing to match potential donors with persons in need. Others favor scientific work
that could obviate the need for donors, as lab-grown and synthetic organs and tissue show increasing
promise. The negative will also be able to argue for alternate methods or levels of decriminalization and
different schemas of regulation.

Wording and Evidence

I would suggest, the sale of human organs.

Should legalize organ sales

GREGORY 11 research editor at the Independent Institute [Anthony Gregory, Why
Legalizing Organ Sales Would Help to Save Lives, End Violence, The Atlantic, 11/2011,
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/11/why-legalizing-organ-sales-would-help-to-save-livesend-violence/248114/]
There are only about 20,000 kidneys every year for the approximately 80,000 patients on the waiting list. In
2008, nearly 5,000 died waiting.
Last month, New Yorker Levy Izhak Rosenbaum

pled guilty in federal court to the crime of facilitating illegal kidney

transplants. It has been deemed the first proven case of black market organ trafficking in the United States. His lawyers argue that
his lawbreaking was benevolent: "The transplants were successful and the donors and recipients are now leading full and healthy
lives."

Indeed, why are organ sales illegal? Donors of blood, semen, and eggs, and volunteers for medical trials,
are often compensated. Why not apply the same principle to organs?
The very idea of legalization might sound gruesome to most people, but it shouldn't, especially since research
shows it would save lives. In the United States, where the 1984 National Organ Transplantation Act prohibits compensation for
organ donating, there are only about 20,000 kidneys every year for the approximately 80,000 patients on the
waiting list. In 2008, nearly 5,000 died waiting.

A global perspective shows how big the problem is. "Millions of people suffer from kidney disease , but in
2007 there were just 64,606 kidney-transplant operations in the entire world ," according to George Mason
University professor and Independent Institute research director Alexander Tabarrok, writing in the Wall Street Journal.
Almost every other country has prohibitions like America's. In Iran, however, selling one's kidney for profit is
legal. There are no patients anguishing on the waiting list. The Iranians have solved their kidney shortage by legalizing
sales.
Many will protest that an organ market will lead to exploitation and unfair advantages for the rich and powerful.
But these are the characteristics of the current illicit organ trade. Moreover, as with drug prohibition today and alcohol
prohibition in the 1920s, pushing a market underground is the way to make it rife with violence and criminality.
In Japan, for the right price, you can buy livers and kidneys harvested from executed Chinese prisoners.
Three years ago in India, police broke up an organ ring that had taken as many as 500 kidneys from poor laborers. The World Health
Organization estimates that the black market accounts for 20 percent of kidney transplants worldwide .
Everywhere from Latin America to the former Soviet Republics, from the Philippines to South Africa, a huge network has emerged typified by
threats, coercion, intimidation, extortion, and shoddy surgeries.
Although not every black market transaction is exploitative -- demonstrating that organ sales, in and of themselves, are not the problem -- the

most unsavory parts of the trade can be attributed to the fact that it is illegal. Witnessing the horror stories, many are
calling on governments to crack down even more severely. Unfortunately, prohibition drives up black-market profits, turns the
market over to organized crime, and isolates those harmed in the trade from the normal routes of recourse .
Several years ago, transplant surgeon Nadley Hakim at St. Mary's Hospital in London pointed out that " this trade is going on anyway,
why not have a controlled trade where if someone wants to donate a kidney for a particular price, that would be acceptable? If it is
done safely, the donor will not suffer."
Bringing the market into the open is the best way to ensure the trade's appropriate activity . Since the
stakes would be very high, market forces and social pressure would ensure that people are not intimidated
or defrauded. In the United States, attitudes are not so casual as to allow gross degeneracy. Enabling a process by which consenting people
engage in open transactions would mitigate the exploitation of innocent citizens and underhanded dealing by those seeking to skirt the law.

The most fundamental case for legalizing organ sales -- an appeal to civil liberty -- has proven highly
controversial. Liberals like to say, "my body, my choice," and conservatives claim to favor free markets,
but true self-ownership would include the right to sell one's body parts , and genuine free enterprise would imply a
market in human organs. In any event, studies show that this has become a matter of life and death.

Perhaps the key to progress is more widespread exposure to the facts . In 2008, six experts took on this issue is an Oxfordstyle debate hosted by National Public Radio. By the end, those in the audience who favored allowing the market climbed from 44 to 60 percent.

Yet, the organ trade continues to operate in the shadows and questionable activities occur in the medical
establishment under the color of law. Even today, doctors sometimes legally harvest organ tissue from dead patients without
consent. Meanwhile, thousands are perishing and even more are suffering while we wait for the system to change.

The truly decent route would be to allow people to withhold or give their organs freely, especially upon
death, even if in exchange for money. Thousands of lives would be saved. Once again, humanitarianism is
best served by the respect for civil liberty, and yet we are deprived both, with horribly unfortunate consequences, just to maintain
the pretense of state-enforced propriety.

NPR hosted a public debate goes over the aff and neg ground quite well
KNOX 08 NPR [Richard Knox, Should We Legalize the Market for Human Organs?, May 21,
200812:01 PM ET, http://www.npr.org/2008/05/21/90632108/should-we-legalize-the-market-for-humanorgans]
Organ transplantation is one of the chief glories of modern medicine . But it's a miracle tragically out of
reach for many thousands of people whose lives might be saved .
There just aren't enough organs to go around. About 75,000 Americans are on the waiting list for kidney
transplants. But in the coming year, just 18,000 will get them. That's only one in four.
It's not as though the others will eventually get kidneys if they just wait, sustained in the meantime by dialysis. In the next
year, nearly 4,000 of those patients will die waiting. At least 1,200 others will fall off the list because they
develop complications that make them too sick to withstand a transplant.
Thousands more transplant candidates might be saved if more Americans signed organ donation cards, if
more families consented to donation of their loved ones' organs, and if medical personnel approached the families of potential donors more often.

But the supply of cadaveric organs has been disappointingly flat.

So in recent years, there's been a push to persuade living Samaritans relatives, friends and even strangers to donate
one of their kidneys. That's helped, but not enough.
The situation has sparked recent debate about what was once unthinkable paying people to donate organs. Six
experts recently tackled that emotional issue in an Oxford-style debate , the last of this season's events in the
Intelligence Squared U.S. series.

The proposition: "We Should Legalize the Market for Human Organs ."
By the end of the session, many of the "undecideds" were persuaded . Before the debate, 29 percent were
uncertain. Afterward, that declined to 9 percent .
Those who favored buying and selling organs went from 44 percent to 60 percent. But those opposed inched up
only 4 points, from 27 to 31 percent.
The debate took place before a capacity crowd on May 13 at the Asia Society and Museum in New York City. Ira Flatow, host of NPR's Talk of
the Nation: Science Friday, moderated.
Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who received a kidney
from a friend in 2006, says:

"Despite decades and decades of public education about the virtues of organ
donation, the waiting list just gets longer, and the time to transplantation just gets longer. ... It's past time to face the fact that
altruism is just not enough. Many people need more of an incentive to give. And that's why we need to be able to compensate people
who are willing to give a kidney to a stranger, to save a life. ... We are not talking about a classic commercial free-for-all, or a free market, or an
eBay system. We're talking about a third-party payer . For example, today you could decide to give a kidney. You'd be called a
Good Samaritan donor. ... The only difference in a model that I'm thinking about is where you go and give your organ, and your retirement
account is wired $40,000, end of story."
Amy Friedman, director of transplantation at SUNY Upstate Medical University and close relative of two transplant recipients
and one live organ donor, says: "I agree with our opponents that the black market must be closed. I disagree with asking patients to accept death
gracefully, instead of resorting to the black market. My position is that development of a legal, regulated mechanism for

donor compensation is the only means of effectively eliminating the demand for this covert activity,
closing down the black market and improving safety for donors and recipients . ... Compensation for the organ

donor's time and risks, by providing life insurance, lifelong health insurance and even a direct monetary fee, is more appropriate than for the
donation of an egg, the rental of a uterus for a surrogate pregnancy, or the participation in clinical experimentation, all of which are legal."
Lloyd R. Cohen, professor of law at George Mason University, says: "The market I propose is one in which

healthy individuals might contract for the sale of their organs and tissue for delivery after their death . If the
vendors' organs are retrieved and transplanted, a payment in the range of $5,000 for each major organ would be made
to a person or institution chosen by the donor. ... In an options market, organs would only be acquired from the dead. No one
need be induced or even permitted to sacrifice his health or bodily integrity for money. The donation of the organs of the
deceased by both rich and poor is currently strongly encouraged, precisely because most of us believe that
surrendering the organ represents no sacrifice to the donor ."

AGAINST THE MOTION

James Childress, professor of ethics at the University of Virginia and chairman of the Institute of
Medicine committee that produced the 2006 report "Organ Donation: Opportunities for Action," says:
"There are strong reasons to believe that compensation for cadaveric organs won't increase the supply .
Imagine a futures market in organs where individuals contract to provide their organs after their deaths,
and in return receive a payment now, or designate the payment to be provided after their deaths to their
families or to a charity. ... Well, consider that many people don't sign donor cards now because of distrust or mistrust.
They worry about being declared dead prematurely, or even having their deaths hastened, if they have signed a
donor card. Well, they would certainly be reluctant to enter a futures market, to sign a futures contract, when the only
barrier to the delivery of their organs is the fact that they're not dead yet."
Francis Delmonico, professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and adviser to the World Health Organization on
transplantation, says: "What we do here has a profound influence on the rest of the world . Now, I say that because I've
been to Manila. And ... it's not a matter of balanced thought when a 14-year-old has to sell a kidney to an American that comes there. It's not a
matter of balanced thought in Pakistan, or in Egypt. ... About 20 patients a month go from Israel to Manila because of cheap prices. If there's a

market legalized in the United States, in the global context of medical tourism, do you think that the 72year-old patient on the list would wait for a kidney here, versus going to buy a 20-year-old kidney in
Manila?"
David Rothman, professor of social medicine at Columbia University and director of the Center on Medicine as a Profession,
says: "What this is really about is the sale of organs from living donors . ... There are very, very good reasons
many drawn from behavioral economics, some drawn from past experience that suggest that, in fact, to create a market
might diminish the supply, not increase it. In the first instance, if I can buy it why should I give it?... In England, where the sale of
blood was not allowed, rates of donation were considerably higher than the U.S., where the sale of blood was allowed."

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SUGGESTED RESOURCES FOR FURTHER READING:

F. Ambagtsheer and W. Weimar,2011 [ Department of Internal Medicine (Section Transplantation),
Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, A Criminological Perspective: Why Prohibition of
Organ Trade Is Not Effective and How the Declaration of Istanbul Can Move Forward American Journal
of Transplantation 2012; 12: 571575 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.16006143.2011.03864.x/pdf]
Time Magazine, 2008 [Legalizing the Organ Trade? by Peter Ritter.
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1833858,00.html]
Gregory, Anthony. "Why Legalizing Organ Sales Would Help to Save Lives, End Violence." The Atlantic.
Atlantic Media Company, 9 Nov. 2011. Web. 3 Feb. 2014.

Mackenzie, 2010 [Catriona, prof of philosoph@ Macquarie University, Conceptions of autonomy and
conceptions of the body in bioethics, Chapter from the book Feminist Bioethics, Published by Johns
Hopkins.
Boyd, 2002 [S Gregory, MD, Considering a Market in Human Organs 4 N.C. J.L. & Tech. 417 (20022003) http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/ncjl4&div=19&id=&page=;]
Stramondo, 2013 [Joseph, Seeing the Forest Through the Trees: What the Radical Feminist Critique of
Prostitution Can Teach Us About the Sale of Kidneys by Living Suppliers International Journal of
Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2013 http://muse.jhu.edu/login?
auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/international_journal_of_feminist_approaches_to_bioethics/v006/
6.1.stramondo.html]
Taylor, 2007 (Robert, Poli-Sci @ UC Davis, SELF-OWNERSHIP AND TRANSPLANTABLE
HUMAN ORGANS Public Affairs Quarterly Volume 21, Number 1, January 2007
http://polisci.ucdavis.edu/people/rstaylor/homepage/papers/Organs ]
Calder, 2004 [Gideon, Prof @ Newport, Bodies for sale: ethics and exploitation in the human body
trade J Med Ethics 2005;31:e8 doi:10.1136/jme.2003.006288, http://jme.bmj.com/content/31/7/e8.full]
The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (http://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/data/)
Donate Life (http://donatelife.net, http://donatelife.net/statistics/)

Physician Assisted Suicide

Debaters love to talk about value to life and death. What better way to have those debates than
centered around the question of assisted suicide. Anyone doing research on the area should start with a
2013 anthology. From the foreward.

HUMPHRY 13 President of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization

[Derek Humphry, Foreword, page xvii xx. From Werth, James L., ed. Contemporary perspectives on
rational suicide. Routledge, 2013.]
Philosophers can ponder, ethicists can strategize, politicians can compromise, but at the end of the day it
is the general public who decides what societal values shall predominate . So it was in Oregon in 1997 when
the citizens of that state voted to keep their Death with Dignity Act which permits , under certain conditions,
physician- assisted suicide for a competent, terminally ill adult . By a margin of 60% to 40% on Ballot Measure 51, in a
turnout of over 1 million electors, Oregonians reaffirmed their 1994 decision (Ballot Measure 16) that they wanted this medical
procedure available to them if they were dying.
The Oregon Legislature, prodded by special-interest lobbyists, wanted the citizens to reverse themselves on the 1994 decision, claiming that they
were at the time ignorant of the true facts about hastened death. Many citizens took offence at being told they were mistaken and took special
pains to repeat their vote. Others changed their vote. Most of the nearly $4 million spent by the campaign to repeal the

Act came from Roman Catholic churches and institutions, plus a hefty sum from the Mormons . With all
donations and their mainly religious sources reported in the media, an aggrieved response may have been triggered on the part of some voters that
they were being dictated to by certain religious forces. Oregonians are noted for their independence in religious matters, and if there is one
traditional principle in American life that is most admirable it is freedom of religion, plus freedom from other peoples religions. It was,
incidentally, an entirely postal vote, giving people the opportunity to reflect, and perhaps discuss, their decisions while at home.

The Oregon double vote on precisely the same law is an historic test of public opinion because this is the
only place in the world in which the citizenry have been asked to decide on the rightness or wrongness of
physician-assisted suicide. All previous changes in existing laws on this subjectin the Netherlands, Australia, and Colombia
were carried out by elected representatives or judges.
Why do I think that the people of Oregon decided that they wanted choice in dying at the end-of -life?
Pain can be a major reason, or fear of pain. Thanks to the clamor in the past decade of the right to die movement, the subject of
pain management is now being seriously addressed in America, following the leadership of the British. Millions of dollars are being
spent. and many fine and dedicated minds are devoting enormous time and energy to the improved
control of terminal suffering. Throughout the l980s, few listened to us when our movement protested that there was too much
unnecessary pain in the modern dying process. It has taken our successes in the ballots and our near- successes (and a lot of noise) in the
legislatures, together with reaching the US. Supreme Court with two important appeals (both rejected. finally) to force the health professions to
take a truly in-depth look at how poorly they care for the dying. It is commonly accepted that the best place, currently, to die in America is
Oregon, precisely because of the 994 passage of the Death with Dignity Act. All of a sudden. after that first vote, the health professions woke up
and started forming task forces and study groups and holding seminars, all to improve the care of the dying. Hospices saw a 20% increase of
patients referred to them by doctors, and the use of morphine began to surpass that m any other state in the nation.
Another reason for the Oregon decision is psychic pain, best known to ordinary peopleas distinct from academics and
physiciansas distress,

unhappiness, sad ness, and being a burden through their dying process on those
whom they love. The sheer strain of being subjected to multiple medical procedures. however skillfully and caringly administered, is a
strain on the body and mind. There is also the process of obvious deterioration of a body once healthy and active, a body In which the person
once had considerable pride. Prolonged medical care, being continually in and out of hospitals, being tabbed

incessantly for laboratory testing purposes, being attached to bits and pieces of equipment. and taking lots
of drugs which often have uncomfortable side-effects are what add up to distress .
Observing that they are losing control, being subjected constantly to medical regi mens. and having to endure a lifestyle never previously
considered can combine to contribute to the unhappiness of terminal patients. Not being able to enjoy the old pasttimes and friendships, no longer
being able to walk the dog or weed the gar denwhatever it is that makes life tolerablethese are the things that make for sadness. Knowing

that life is drawing to a close, being conscious that they must soon say a final goodbye to those whom
they love, and giving up hard-worked-for and prized possessions all contribute to the grief, or selfmourning, of the patient. We hear from strident right.to-life critics that, il we pass laws permitting hastened deaths to be chosen by

dying people, those who are a burden, physically or financially, will either be pushed into quick deaths or feel obliged to check out prematurely.
This Is their slippery slope argument.

It is the most natural of human feelings not to want to be a huge physical, emotional, and financial burden
on family, and one of the more admirable human feelings, in my opinion. In the right to die movement we tell people who approach us with
this problem that, if they Look carefully, they will probably find that family is only too pleased and proud to take care of them, and also that it Is
payback time for younger people to look after the older folk facing their ends. But let us be honest and admit that the

burden question is sometimes a genuine component to be fed into the hopper when considering the end. (lam
definitely not referring here to persons who are permanently disabled or handicapped in some way. In the Oregon law, and others to
follow, such persons could only get assisted death if they were terminally ill, asked for it, and met the
conditions,)
All of the above states of mind add up to that factor called the quality of life . It is not a phrase to which the
opponents of assisted dying make much reference. Quality of life is a state that even the most caring and expert phyciaan cannot assess. Neither
can the most ecperienced psychiatrist nor the well.equipped health technician quan iffy it. Quality of life is far too intimate, too

personal, and too individual for others to be involved in, It is the quintessence of the meaning of life in the human species. It
is what makes our lives so varied and interesting, distinct from robots. It is far too glib to pass this factor off as depression in the ready parlance
that is so fashionable now adays.
Although nobody more than me welcomes the wonderful research being done into pain, and the saintly work being done by a burgeoning hospice
movement, this will never provide the whole answer, the universal solution, as some claim. No matter how superb the quality of terminal care, a
small number of patients will want to bring their lives to a faster close. A truly free society will, with certain safeguards.

permit that.
One of the great benefits of having a legalized assistance-in.dying procedure in place is that it will give
patients great comfort to know thatif their sufferings get completely out of handthey could ask their doctors to
help them to die. It will reduce the number of suicides that are carried out far too soon because the patient
fears losing control. worried by the prospect of another stroke or lapsing into a state of unconsciousness or incompetence. It will
reduce the number of mercy killings those horrific domestic events when one person slays the person they care for most in the
world because they overwhelmingly feel that it is their human duty to take charge and reLieve the others suffering. Many of these
tragedies result in the perpetra tor also killing himself or herself , either out of a wish to die together after a good
relationship, or guilt. ormore likely n my viewdread of societys retribution with a prison sentence.

None of these reasons is by itself a justifiable reason to request and receive doctor- assisted dying. A
combination of a number of the reasons is. Lawful assistance in dying is also needed to lift the grossly unfair
burden it is currently placing on those brave doctors who are in cases in which they feel mtdi cally and morally justified,
even obligatedactively helping their patients to die. Nobody can collect statistics on this syndrome because,
although it is a criminal act throughout America. there are only two convictions recorded both in New York State,
one in 19% and one in 19%. Still, nobody dares gather data on the action. It is the secret crime of the bedroom, except in the Netherlands.
where it has governmental sanction and we are kept aware of the results through extensive research. I estimate that it happens many hundreds of
time a year in America, (king oshcd to indepen. dently supply lethal drugs covertly, without the ability to consult other health profes sionals on
the advisability of what they are about lo do. Is completely unfair lo these doctors. Besides assisting suicide being a elony (except. since 1997, in
Oregon), although, as I have said, there are only two recorded convictions, doclor also act secretly for fear of becoming the notorious first test
case. Dr. Kevorkian opens himself to criticism for many of his actions, but his openness. courage. and determina tion are unquestionable and
unique in this field.

Physician-assisted suicide must essentially be a team effort Doctors, nurses, mental health professionals,
and social workers should all (if they choose) be Involved in a decision whether or not to accelerate the death
of a suffering, terminally ill person who requests it. The awesome nature of being party to the ending of a human life is too
great for one person to shoulder.
Finally, there is the matter

of patient empowerment . Why do so many peopleupwards of 100go to Dr Jack

Kevorkian to die, and tens of thousands more buy my book Final Exit to study how to achieve this
themselves if they need to? In perusing some of the lengthier written accounts of the lives of Dr. Kevorkians clients, it becomes
clear that these are take-charge persona, willing to avail themselves of the best that modem medicine
can offer until it runs out of options and death is beckoning, but not willing to be sacrificed on the altar of the out-of date
ethics of the American Medical Association. So the answer Lies in the area of individual control and choice . The
terminally ill personor in the cases of many of Dr. Kevorkians clients, the irreversibly ill personwhen planning his or her own death at last
feels in control of what is happen ing. It Is the concluding action thai he or he will do in life. He or she has ihougt it over and elected to go out
this route, This is the way for him or her (but not for everybody) of dignity and of pride. For how we die is the ultimate civil liberty.

Including calls for federal action.

CHAN 13 UC Berkeley - rhetoric and political science. MA International Criminal

Justice [Jacinda Chan, The U.S. Should Legalize Assisted Suicide By Euthanasia, January 18, 2013
http://www.policymic.com/articles/23553/the-u-s-should-legalize-assisted-suicide-by-euthanasia]
Two deaf twins were euthanized in Belgium this week for extreme emotional suffering. After having lived together their entire lives, they could
not bear enduring never seeing each other again due to a medical condition that would leave them permanently blind. But in the U.S.,

assisted suicide is a rare occurrence. Very few states have laws permitting euthanasia , but the federal
government should change this regulation.
The government should legalize euthanasia and provide psychological therapy for those who perform the
act in order to help, not to murder, while, writing a corollary law prohibiting the request for euthanasia. Euthanasia the act of
assisting suicide harms people who perform the act because it requires the performer to take a life.
Euthanasia is not a private decision or action.
Advocates of euthanasia argue that the act should be an individuals private decision because it does not harm others. Advocates of euthanasia
argue that all people, regardless of physical capability, should be able to do what they want with their bodies, including the ability to choose when
and how they die. In order to have equal access to this freedom for people unable to commit suicide, they advocate for euthanasia on the grounds
that it is a private decision because it does not harm anyone.

But euthanasia harms the person performing the act. Unlike suicide, where a person kills himself,
euthanasia requires person A to kill person B at the consent of person B.
Killing another human being has negative psychological impacts on humans who are not sociopaths.
Taking another persons life will traumatize the euthanizer especially trained doctors who repeatedly
perform the procedure. According to social journalist Rupert Taylor, the repeated killing of humans causes people to harm themselves,
exhibiting behaviors like drinking excessively or committing suicide.

In short, solvency advocates for a number of possible advantages exist. Including pain and suffering,
control of ones own life, human dignity, and human rights.

SHARMA 04 [Sharma, B. R. "The end of life decisionsshould physicians aid their patients in
dying?." Journal of clinical forensic medicine 11.3 (2004): 133-140.]
Decisions pertaining to end of life whether legalized or otherwise, are made in many parts of the world
but not reported on account of legal implications. The highly charged debate over voluntary euthanasia
and physician assisted suicide was brought into the public arena again when two British doctors confessed
to giving lethal doses of drugs to hasten the death of terminally ill patients . Lack of awareness regarding the
distinction between different procedures on account of legal status granted to them in some countries is the other area
of concern. Some equate withdrawal of life support measures to physician assisted suicide whereas
physician assisted suicide is often misinterpreted as euthanasia . Debate among the medical practitioners, law makers
and the public taking into consideration the cultural, social and religious ethos will lead to increased awareness, more
safeguards and improvement of medical decisions concerning the end of life. International Human Rights
Law can provide a consensual basis for such a debate on euthanasia .
Those interested in researching disabilities and able-bodied discussions would find lots of literature
discussing death and the need for assistance.
Van Den Haag 97 [Van den Haag, Ernest. "Whose Life Is It: Decriminalize Assisted Suicide and
Euthanasia?." CRIMINAL LAW BULLETIN-BOSTON- 33 (1997): 262-269.]
While most persons are physically able to take their life when they want to, some individuals are so disabled
they cannot do it without assistance. Laws in nearly all jurisdictions, however, attempt to prevent such
assistance. Physicians are the most appropriate persons to help patients and others who want to end their
lives. Nonetheless, the Hippocratic oath, tradition, and medical education continue to lead many

physicians to believe they must keep patients alive at all costs, regardless of their wishes. The government has no
demonstrable interest in forcing unwilling persons to live , but it may have an interest in preventing
individuals from taking avoidable risks. The role of mental illness and the issue of comatose or
incompetent persons in assisted suicide and euthanasia are discussed, as well as the possibility of abuse of
assisted suicide. The author concludes that the law should not punish those who assist in suicide or perform euthanasia. 8 footnotes
Additionally, I have avoided listing federalism as an advantage and disad area for each of the topics.
However, there is at least one high quality article discussing the federalism issues inherent in PAD
debates.

BIX 03 [Bix, Brian. "Physician Assisted Suicide and Federalism." Notre Dame journal of law, ethics &
public policy 17 (2003).]
The article considers the application of general theories of federalism (e.g., states as laboratories and competitive
federalism) to the issue of physician-assisted suicide . The article also uses the analogies of same-sex marriage and medical
marijuana to explore some of the moral and policy issues raised by this intersection of medical ethics and federalism.

In terms of negative ground, one half of the Werth anthology is dedicated to arguments against assisted
suicide. Without being exhaustive, that list includes:
Elderly Abuse
Dore, amongst others, argues that Physician-assisted suicide would be used as a cover for the abuse and
early death of elderly persons.
Consent Issues
Similarly, Cameron and others point out that required legal consent issues apply to all sorts of medical
procedures in the status quo. Assuming that it would be applied better to suicide is silly.
Improved Care
The most likely counterplans will stem from attempts to improve care for those in situations where
suicide is their chosen mechanism. Emanuel argues that before we begin to consider broad legalization
we should make sure that the care that is provided is exceptional.
Life is Good
The core negative argument can center around the simple claim that death is always bad. Suicide
shouldnt be an option. Multiple chapters of the anthology are from philosophers and ethicists arguing
that we should never allow people to take their own lives given that life is always the possibility of
survival.
I will conclude by saying that anyone who is interested in this as an area should begin their search by
looking at the Werth citation listed below. It is a collection of multiple perspectives and recent
scholarship dealing with the issue of physician assisted suicide.

Citations
BATTIN, MARGARET P., and RYAN SPELLECY. "What Kind of Freedom? Szaszs Misleading
Perception of Physician-Assisted Suicide." Szasz Under Fire: A Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics
1 (2004): 277.

Beach, F. L. "HOSPITAL CONCERNS ABOUT END-OF-LIFE CARE: SOME INTERNATIONAL

COMPARISONS." MESSAGE FROM THE CONFERENCE PROGRAM CHAIR. 2013.
Bix, Brian. "Physician Assisted Suicide and Federalism." Notre Dame journal of law, ethics & public
policy 17 (2003).
Brodowski, Helene, and Marybeth Malloy. "Suffering Against Their Will: The Terminally Ill and
Physician Assisted Suicide--a Constitutional Analysis." Journal of Civil Rights and Economic
Development 12.1 (2012): 11.
Cameron, Ian A. "Perspectives on consent." Canadian Medical Association Journal 184.18 (2012): 20182018.
Cassity, Shelly A. "To Die or Not to Die: The History and Future of Assisted Suicide Laws in the US."
Utah L. Rev. (2009): 515.
Coombes, Kendra. "Politics of End-of-Life Care: Active Euthanasia." (2013).
Dore, Margaret K. "Physician-assisted suicide: A recipe for elder abuse and the illusion of personal
choice." VERMONT BAR JOURNAL (2011).
Doyal, Len. "The case for physician-assisted suicide and active euthanasia in amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis." Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. London: Martin Dunitz (2000): 423-39.
Emanuel, Ezekiel J. "Four Myths About Doctor-Assisted Suicide." New York Times 2 (2012): 45.
Gostin, Lawrence. "The Constitutional Right to Die: Ethical Considerations." Journal of Civil Rights and
Economic Development 12.3 (2012): 2.
Gorsuch, Neil M. The future of assisted suicide and euthanasia. Princeton University Press, 2009.
Johnston, Will. "More on assisted suicide." Canadian Medical Association Journal 184.18 (2012): 20182018.
Lewy, Guenter. Assisted death in Europe and America: Four regimes and their lessons. Oxford University
Press, 2010.
MacLeod, Rod D., Donna M. Wilson, and Phillipa Malpas. "Assisted or hastened death: the healthcare
practitioner's dilemma." Global journal of health science 4.6 (2012).
Malpas, Phillipa J., Kay Mitchell, and Malcolm H. Johnson. "I wouldnt want to become a nuisance
under any circumstancesa qualitative study of the reasons some healthy older individuals support
medical practices that hasten death." The New Zealand medical journal 125.1358 (2012): 9.
McGee, Robert W. "Suicide is a property right; assisted suicide is a contract right." Comment Law Public
Policy 1 (1997): 36-47.
Orlando, Stephen J. "Doctor Will See You for the Last Time Now: Physician-Assisted Suicide in
Massachusetts, The." (2013).

Perlmutter, Steve. "Physician-Assisted Suicide-A Medicolegal Inquiry." Mich. St. UJ Med. & L. 15
(2010): 203.
Sharma, B. R. "The end of life decisionsshould physicians aid their patients in dying?." Journal of
clinical forensic medicine 11.3 (2004): 133-140.
Sharma, B. R. "International human rights law and the debate on euthanasiaA Viewpoint." Indian
Internet Journal of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology 3.4 (2005).
Sharma, B. R. "To legalize physician-assisted suicide or not?a dilemma." Journal of clinical forensic
medicine 10.3 (2003): 185-190.
Stell, Lance. "Physician Assisted Suicide: To Decriminalize or to Legalize, That Is the Question."
Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate. New York: Routledge (1998): 225-51.
Sumner, Leonard Wayne. Assisted death: A study in ethics and law. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Tarnow, William J. "Recognizing a Fundamental Liberty Interest Protecting the Right to Die: An Analysis
of Statutes Which Criminalize or Legalize Physician Assisted Suicide." Elder LJ 4 (1996): 407.
Tulloch, Gail. Euthanasia, Choice and Death. Edinburgh University Press, 2005.
Van Norman, Gail A. "Physician aid-in-dying: cautionary words." Current Opinion in Anesthesiology
27.2 (2014): 177-182.
Werth, James L., ed. Contemporary perspectives on rational suicide. Routledge, 2013.
Wester-Mittan, Candle M. Physician-assisted death: four views on the issue of legalizing PAD: a legal
research guide. Vol. 53. Fred B Rothman & Co, 2009.
Williams, Glenys. Intention and causation in medical non-killing: the impact of criminal law concepts on
euthanasia and assisted suicide. Routledge, 2007.

Prostitution
There are great solvency advocates for the legalization of prostitution. It is an issue that has been
discussed, researched and defended by every undergraduate who has taken some gender studies classes at
some point. It should be debated.

A solvency advocate and brief discussion of the topic

FORD 12 MA Criminology and Criminal Justice SIU [Ford, Everette, "From Prostitute to
Professional" (2012). Research Papers. Paper 311. http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/gs_rp/311]
Steve Martin once said that I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy. While Steve Martin
may not be an authority on the matter, his joke is relevant to the thoroughly discussed topic of prostitution. Prostitution occurs all

around world and involves the sale and purchase of sex by willing adults . Traditionally prostitution occurs out in the
street by the sex worker (most of whom are women) approaching the "John" (the customer or purchaser of sexual services, usually male) or the
sex worker being approached by the John. Prostitution can also occur as a result of sex trafficking which involves individuals who are mostly
woman, being transported to the United States legally or illegally from other countries and are then forced and or coerced into becoming sex
workers. For the purposes of this paper, the latter situation will be referred to only as sex trafficking, in order to distinguish it from the topic at
hand, the willing, consensual exchange of sexual services for money, i.e. prostitution. The purpose of this paper is to argue in

favor of policy reformations that would decriminalize prostitution in the United States, and explore the
advantages that this would have.
This will be done in part by comparing the US to other countries , particularly other developed Western nations which
have either relaxed enforcement of prostitution laws or have no legal prohibitions at all. Instead of focusing primarily on how
decriminalizing prostitution would be beneficial to sex workers, this paper will attempt to demonstrate
that decriminalizing prostitution will also be beneficial to society as well . For example, Brents and
Hausbeck (2005) reported in their study that decriminalizing prostitution would not only decrease violence against
sex workers but would also benefit society as a whole by decreasing community disorder which comes in
the form of harms that result due to visibility of prostitution on the street, such as the encouragement of
criminal behavior and being harmful to minors. This paper will propose that the decriminalization of prostitution
specifically involves the removal of prostitution from the street and placing it in legalized brothels that
have regulations that must be followed by the mangers and sex workers in order to remain in business.
To explain how the decriminalization of prostitution would be beneficial to society there will be a discussion of
three relevant topics, along with a policy implication suggestion that will address the issue of community disorder. The first topic is
the health concerns associated with prostitution. This section of the paper will argue that the decriminalization of
prostitution will help reduce the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STI's) by discussing the regulations that are
placed on legalized brothels. The second topic that will be discussed is the safety concerns associated with
prostitution. This section will focus on the decrease in victimization of sex workers by emphasizing the safety and protection that would be
provided within a legalized brothel. The third topic that will be discussed is the issue of human sex trafficking and its
connection to prostitution. This section will focus on the key difference between the two illegal acts, which
is the willingness and consent of the sex workers to engage in these acts. It will also attempt to demonstrate that the
decriminalization of prostitution will allow law enforcement to focus their attention and resources on the
more serious crime of sex trafficking.
In addition to these three main topics the final section will summarize and discuss the arguments against the decriminalization of prostitution.

This section will contain arguments made by some feminist researchers and advocates who suggest
that the decriminalization of prostitution will be more harmful to sex workers than helpful , and will
encourage the objectification of women in general (Farley, 2004). Finally, there will be a discussion of my own thoughts
regarding the necessary societal changes that would need to be made in United States in order for prostitution to become decriminalized. This
section will highlight the changes made by societies that have either relaxed enforcement of prostitution laws or no legal prohibitions at all in
order to help further define the societal changes that the U.S. would need to make in order to successfully change current policies and allow
prostitution to become decriminalized.

Criminalization fails and hurts sex workers legalization is ethical

Long, Billy. "Freedom for Women in the Sex Work Occupation: Twenty-Three Reasons Why
Prostitution Should Be Legalized In America." Vol. 2 No. 16 [Special Issue August 2012].
9.7 Conclusion
The debate concerning the legalization of prostitution will continue . Criminalization of this victimless
crime is almost completely inefficacious. Myriad obstacles are preventing lawmakers from understanding
why liberalization of prostitution laws is desirable . As was shown earlier, people routinely conflate multiple types
of prostitution thereby masking the drastic differences between them. Many equate uneducated, drug-addicted
streetwalkers with all other varieties of sex workers. This is unfortunate. While it is true that a host of social maladies are
associated with streetwalking, to criminalize all varieties of prostitution as a response is similar to throwing the
baby out with the bathwater.
Indeed, private (a.k.a. indoor, off-street) prostitution legalization will represent a natural evolution of liberalization
of laws affecting the body. Marijuana laws, as well as those surrounding abortion, nudity, premarital sex,
miscegenation, euthanasia, and gays have all become more tolerant regarding individual rights. Also,
legalization will help to protect women from sexually transmitted diseases, pimps, and abusive men .
Prostitutes will become more professionalized and women will at least be partially liberated from
patriarchal structures because women will be able to use prostitution as a way of escaping violent relationships. Women also will
increase their economic power via redistribution of wealth from males to females.
In essence, the draconian laws that seek to prevent willing participants from engaging in normal behavior
(in this case sex) are pointless almost to absurdity. Sex is legal ; free market capitalism whereby a person is free to sell
their talents also is legal. Does it make sense, then, to criminalize the two when they occur simultaneously?
To answer this question in the affirmative is a non-sequitur.
Finally, legalization is supported by ethical theory . The deontological ethical tradition argues that in
order for a behavior to be considered ethical, it must pass the categorical imperative test . That is, if we are to
criminalize a behavior, the criminalization process must be universal otherwise we are hypocrites. As noted
throughout, the vast majority of times when sex takes place with reciprocity in mind it is considered legal. It is only when prostitutes receive cash
that society lashes out against them. As Immanuel Kant noted, act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at

the same time, will that it should become a universal law without contradiction (Kant, 1993, p. 30). The
criminalization of private prostitution clearly violates that ethical principle.

Need to begin to make the change to create a system of safe prostitution

WAGENAAR et al 12 [Wagenaar, Hendrik, and Sietske Altink. "Prostitution as Morality Politics or
Why It Is Exceedingly Difficult To Design and Sustain Effective Prostitution Policy." Sexuality Research
and Social Policy 9.3 (2012): 279-292.]
Conclusion
The conclusion to this paper can be as brief as its main argument in the introduction: For

the well-being and rights of sex

workers and for the purpose of creating safe, diverse, and vibrant urban spaces , it is important that elected
officials and administrators take prostitution policy as seriously as policies in other, more established administrative
domains as health, schooling, work or the environment, and to prevent it from descending into a state of antagonistic morality politics. For this
style of pragmatic, humane policy making to emerge four conditions need to be met .
The first condition for such a transformation is an awareness among elected officials, administrators, and all other relevant actors
that prostitution policy is in the grip of fierce ideological debates. It is a fact of life that deep differences of belief and
value play a role in every policy domain, and as often as not these prove to intractable and resistant to the arbitrage of scientific research (Schn
and Rein 1994). But that does not necessarily imply that these controversies are wholly intractable. Although
reliable facts and numbers rarely settle a dispute (Rein 1983; Stone 1997), they do have the ability to bring a measure of discipline in policy

controversies. A second

condition is the creation of a stable body of well-trained, experienced administrators

who specialize in prostitution policy. Continuity is crucial here. As with every social domain, it takes years to attain the
kind of experience that allows you to distinguish realistic from ill-conceived plans , to obtain the depth and density
of social networks that make it possible for the administrator to test her ideas against the ideas and experiences of others, and to make operational
the administrative networks that allow for collective problem solving through public learning (Ansell 2011). In addition, it takes a long

time to gain the trust of sex workers and proprietors that allow administrators to communicate information effectively and
read the signals of exploitation. In our research, we find that experienced administrators who have been on the job for a considerable period of
time, can develop a stance towards prostitution that is simultaneously pragmatic, realistic, reflective and humane. In this way, such

administrators act as a barrier to dogmatic ideas and heroic solutions proposed by sensationalist media or
elected officials who are out for a quick success .
A third condition is the creation of an international body of scholarship which , based on solid empirical work,
patiently accumulates knowledge and insights about (the effects) of policy implementation . This not only
allows policy entrepreneurs (Kingdon 2002) to generate novel solutions, but also the critical assessment of such new ideas by an international
community of experts. And fourth, it is imperative that we allow relevant groups, sex workers in the first place, but

also clients, proprietors and residents of prostitution areas, to participate in the design and implementation
of policy measures. Not only do they have the practical, experiential knowledge that makes it possible to design feasible policy measures,
but under the right circumstances they can come up with the kind of mutual gains solutions that will overcome intransigent conflict (Forester
2009). That is not a utopian fantasy is shown by the success of the city of The Hague in developing a

licensing system with an, admittedly, far from perfect deliberative process (Wagenaar 2006), or the case of the
German city of Dortmund in which an initiative by citizens and voluntary organizations to deal with street prostitution has evolved in a
successful long-term partnership with city officials and the police (Wagenaar and Specht 2010; Mais 2011).

There are a lot of possible affirmative advocates from different scholastic backgrounds that argue for the
need to legalize prostitution. Most of those advocates study European and Nevada models where some
version of sex work has previously been legalized. As such, there are numerous solvency mechanisms,
counterplans, and advantages to be explored. A brief listing is below.

Health & Treatment of Workers

Both the aff and the neg will be able to make claims about the health and treatment of sex workers. Most
advocates argue that the legalization would empower workers and have larger societal benefits.

Decreases Disease and rape Incidences - Study about the decriminalization of

prostitution in Rhode Island
CUNNINGHAM et al 13 [Cunningham, Scott, and Manisha Shah. "Decriminalizing Prostitution:
Surprising Implications for Sexual Violence and Public Health." (2013).]
Most governments in the world including the United States prohibit prostitution due to moral repugnance, though
disease and victimization risks associated with sex markets are salient policy concerns. Given these types of laws rarely
change and are fairly uniform across regions, our knowledge about the impact of decriminalizing sex work is largely conjectural. We exploit the
fact that a Rhode Island District Court judge unexpectedly decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003 to

provide the first causal estimates of the impact of decriminalization on the composition of the sex market, rape offenses,
and population sexually transmitted infection outcomes. Not surprisingly, we find that decriminalization increased the
size of the indoor market. However, somewhat unexpectedly, we find that decriminalization caused both forcible
rape offenses and gonorrhea incidence to decline for the overall population . Our synthetic control model
finds 824 fewer reported rape offenses and 1,035 fewer cases of female gonorrhea from 2004 to 2009. The
combined benefits of six years of decriminalization are estimated to be approximately 200 million USD.
Decriminalization appears to benefit the population at large, especially women and not just sex workers.

Additionally, there have been several studies, such as this one the one by Seals et al, that have discussed
the different benefits of multiple forms of legal prostitution. In short, both the aff and the neg will be able
to engage in debates about

Neighborhood Improvements
A good number of the studies such as Hubbard and Prior discuss the communal impacts of legalized
and criminalized prostitution. Basically, prostitution devalues neighborhoods, brings in other crimes, and
tends to undermine the overall value of communities. Legalized prostitution would solve those issues.

Trafficking
As the Ford card above suggests in the introduction, sex trafficking is the hidden other side of the
prostitution issue. Many persons currently working in prostitution are doing so because of trafficking.
There are arguments that go both ways. Ford makes the argument that legalization would allow for
regulation and thus decrease the number of persons who were trafficked into participating. Additionally,
legalization would allow current police efforts aimed at eradicating prostitution to focus on trafficking.
Others like Cho, Seo-Young, Dreher, and Neumayer, have published recent studies that discuss the pros
and cons of criminalization on trafficking efforts. The literature is certainly not one sided and could make
for some amazingly in depth solvency debates.

Negative
The best part about including decriminalized prostitution in the topic is that the case debate on each of the
main advantage areas [Health, Safety, and Trafficking] is well contested. While there are great studies
about the benefits, there are many who argue against them and suggest that the opposite outcome is just as
likely. In addition to that there are several other angles that the negative could take.
Additionally, there is a great deal of solvency based literature. Many of the places that have legalized
prostitution have done so in a myriad of different ways. Wagenaar, Hendrik, and Sietske Altink discuss
the varying problems that arise from attempts to legalize. Including, but not limited to, underground
markets, lack of registration, poor administration, and lack of trust in police.
Counterplan ground could also be fruitful. There are many places that have started establishing John
Schools which provide education and training to men. Basically, instead of decriminalizing prostitution,
the law would shift its focus to the criminalizing of the John or the person purchasing services. See Cook
below.
There are also feminist arguments to be made against prostitution. Ford, the solvency advocate from
above, does a solid job of explaining one of their criticisms.

Feminist arguments against legalization

FORD 12 MA Criminology and Criminal Justice SIU [Ford, Everette, "From Prostitute to
Professional" (2012). Research Papers. Paper 311. http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/gs_rp/311]
Some feminist theorists, scholars, and advocates for women's rights oppose the decriminalization of
prostitution due to the effect that it would have on all women, not just the ones who engage in sex work. An argument

put forth by some feminists is that decriminalizing prostitution would be demeaning to women (Farley, 2005).
In other words it would encourage the objectification of all women by men. It would make it seem as if
there is nothing wrong with the behavior that the men are engaging in. Men wouldn't stop treating women
in this way because theyre not being penalized for their behavior . The absence of consequences for their
behavior only strengthens their belief that they are not doing anything wrong . Decriminalizing prostitution
would give the impression that it is acceptable for men to view and treat women as if they are objects for
sexual consumption, and not human beings; this would in turn also strengthen the stigma that is already associated with being a sex
worker (Jeffreys, 2010).

Farley, cited below, does a great job of answering both many of the inevitability arguments and the
general claim that legalization would improve the lives of women.

Citations
Cho, Seo-Young, Axel Dreher, and Eric Neumayer. "Does legalized prostitution increase human
trafficking?." World development 41 (2013): 67-82.
Conant, Michael, Federalism, the Mann Act, and the Imperative to Decriminalize Prostitution; 5 Cornell
J. L. & Pub. Pol'y 99 (1995-1996)
Cook, Ian R. "Making links between sex work, gender and victimisation: The politics and pedagogies of
John Schools.", http://research.northumbria.ac.uk/urbanfutures/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/CookMaking-links-between-sex-work-gender-and-victimisation.pdf
Cunningham, Scott, and Manisha Shah. "Decriminalizing Prostitution: Surprising Implications for Sexual
Violence and Public Health." (2013).
Farley, M. (2004). "Bad for the body, bad for the heart": Prostitution harms women even if legalized of
decriminalized. Violence Against Women, 10(10), 1087-1125.
Farley, M. (2005). Prostitution harms women even if indoors. Violence Against Women, 11(7),
950-964.
Ford, Everette, "From Prostitute to Professional" (2012). Research Papers. Paper 311.
http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/gs_rp/311
http://prostitution.procon.org/view.subissues.php?issueID=000363
Hubbard, Phil, et al. "Noxious neighbours? Interrogating the impacts of sex premises in residential areas."
Environment and Planning A 45.1 (2013): 126-141.
Long, Billy. "Freedom for Women in the Sex Work Occupation: Twenty-Three Reasons Why Prostitution
Should Be Legalized In America." Vol. 2 No. 16 [Special Issue August 2012].
McCarthy, Bill, et al. "Regulating sex work: heterogeneity in legal strategies." Annual Review of Law and
Social Science 8 (2012): 255-271.
Oselin, Sharon S., and Ronald Weitzer. "Organizations working on behalf of prostitutes: An analysis of
goals, practices, and strategies." Sexualities 16.3-4 (2013): 445-466.

Outshoorn, Joyce. "Policy change in prostitution in the Netherlands: from legalization to strict control."
Sexuality Research and Social Policy 9.3 (2012): 233-243.
Prior, Jason, and Penny Crofts. "Effects of sex premises on neighbourhoods: Residents, local planning
and the geographies of a controversial land use." New Zealand Geographer 68.2 (2012): 130-140.
Seals, Maryann. "Worker Rights and Health Protection for Prostitutes: A Comparison of The Netherlands,
Germany and Nevada." Health care for women international just-accepted (2013).
Wagenaar, Hendrik, and Sietske Altink. "Prostitution as Morality Politics or Why It Is Exceedingly
Difficult To Design and Sustain Effective Prostitution Policy." Sexuality Research and Social Policy 9.3
(2012): 279-292.
Weitzer, Ronald John. Legalizing prostitution: From illicit vice to lawful business. NYU Press, 2012.

Should be Considered

Concealed Carry
Concealed Carry Laws
A nod to conservative factions. It is illegal to carry a concealed weapon. There are both federal and state
laws prohibiting people from doing so.
http://www.usacarry.com/concealed_carry_permit_information.html
The affirmative would strengthen the second amendment. There are numerous advantages to a deterrence
based gun state that the aff would be able to read.
The negative would respond with two specific set of arguments. First would be guns are bad generally
simple enough. Second, the neg would respond with deterrence fails type argument as that is the main
area of the concealed weapons literature.
The case debate about gun crimes is a well researched and thorough place for case arguments. McElroy,
Marjorie B., and Peichun Wang. "Do Concealed Gun Permits Deter Crime? New Results From a Dynamic
Model." (2012).
It is certainly a timely debate with an un-surprising amount of literature discussing the pros and cons. For
a recent example see, Donohue, John J., Abhay Aneja, and Alexandria Zhang. "The Impact of Right to
Carry Laws and the N RC Report: The Latest Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy."
(2014).
Additionally, there are plenty of aff and neg arguments to be made about cross-border spillover issues
related to US Gun Laws. For example, see, Dube, Arindrajit, Oeindrila Dube, and Omar Garca-Ponce.
"Cross-Border Spillover: US Gun Laws and Violence in Mexico." American Political Science Review
107.03 (2013): 397-417.
CITES
Aneja, Abhay, John J. Donohue III, and Alexandria Zhang. The Impact of Right to Carry Laws and the
NRC Report: The Latest Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy. No. w18294. National
Bureau of Economic Research, 2012.
Cook, Philip J., Anthony A. Braga, and Mark H. Moore. "Gun control." Crime and Public Policy (2011):
257-292.
Duggan, Mark. More guns, more crime. No. w7967. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2000.
Goss, Kristin A. Disarmed: The missing movement for gun control in America. Princeton University
Press, 2010.
Lang, Matthew. "Do Guns Affect Crime? Evidence Using a Direct Measure of Firearms." Evidence Using
a Direct Measure of Firearms (December 28, 2012) (2012).
Levitt, Steven D. "Understanding why crime fell in the 1990s: Four factors that explain the decline and
six that do not." Journal of Economic perspectives (2004): 163-190.

HIV Status
This section was done, in its entirety by Jackie Poapst. With my apologies for any ugly formatting issues.

Introduction
Despite the rich historical background of the AIDS epidemic, from the Reagan administrations lack of
address to the ACT-UP riots, current AIDS issues do not garner as much attention as they should. Time
and time again, the government has failed to adequately address AIDS, instead favoring oppressive
containment policies like quarantining Haitian aids patients in Guantanamo Bay and instituting strict
legislation for HIV-positive individuals. Being HIV positive has become a diseased moniker that places
positive individuals at the outskirts of society: a place of taboo. Many would assume that the status quo
has become a safe space for HIV-positive individuals, we have AIDS awareness campaigns, AZT
medications and even governmental funding for research. However, contrary to this progress are the rigid
laws that place HIV-positive individuals into criminal status:
Thirtytwo U.S. states and two territories have statutes that criminalize sexual and other conduct
of persons who are HIVpositive. Many of these laws were passed in response to the Ryan White
Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990, which required states to outlaw
intentional transmission of HIV as a condition of federal funding, but almost all of them reach far
beyond intentional infection and affect conduct that has not resulted in infection and even conduct
that could never result in infection. Hundreds of state courts have also used HIVpositive status as
an element of traditional crimes such as assault with a deadly weapon, reckless endangerment,
even attempted murder. 1

Why Debate HIV Decriminalization

The debate over treatment of diseased individuals is extensive, yet often not discussed in policy
debate. This silence mirrors the lack of discussion in the past on the part of the government, which fueled
the Silence=Death campaign. During the early ACT-UP riots at the onset of the AIDS crisis, the intense
discussion over governmental actions was a highly political issue. Time has not numbed partisanship.
Despite todays progressivism in society, there are still heated viewpoints on both sides of the HIV
decriminalization debate that would provide for a rich debate:
A coalition of advocacy groups, backed by U.S. Representative Barbara Lee (DCalif.), has
launched a campaign to press for review and repeal of criminal laws that target HIV-positive
people, The Associated Press (AP) reports. Currently, 34 states have criminal laws that punish
people for exposing another person to HIV, whether or not HIV transmission actually occurred,
and laws generally do not consider condom use as a defense. In September 2011, Lee introduced
a bill that would provide states with incentives to reform these laws. Some prosecutors say the
laws are appropriate in certain cases while activists argue that these laws are based on ignorance
and have negative consequences like deterring people from getting tested or getting into care. 2
Not only are there the obvious advantage areas like human rights and LGBTQ areas of literature
to debate, but the HIV decriminalization debate also includes many unforeseen areas that would provide a
large swath of affirmative and negative ground. For example, with the topic of HIV decriminalization
comes a deep debate over economics:

IPPF contends, The drive for criminalization of willful transmission of HIV is proving a costly
intervention in terms of time and money spent on investigating individuals private lives and
determining the burden of proof and seems to have had limited impact on HIV prevention.
However, Wendy Wright told C-Fams Friday Fax that the costs of enforcing the laws are dwarfed
in comparison to the costs associated with HIV/AIDS. 3
Also, with the expanded spread of HIV, AIDS related issues have become an international fight.
Drives to fight stigmatization and proponents for HIV decriminalization span country borders, providing
an extensive debate concerning international norms and coalition-building. 4
While the affirmative ground on the HIV status debate is rich, this debate is far from one-sided.
For example, numerous discussions are being had in the literature concerning alternative mechanisms for
legal solutions. A popular discussion is the review counterplan:
As indicated by UNAIDS [24] a review of existing laws that criminalize HIV exposure, HIV
transmission, and nondisclosure of HIV positive serostatus can identify those laws and legal
precedents that are vague or open to misinterpretation, and that lead to discrimination. 5
Not only is there deep debates over political process concerning HIV status decriminalization, but there is
also a healthy debate on both sides over the effectiveness in resolving the more critical side of this debate:
The social structural phenomena of racism, sexism, and homophobia may be factors in the
criminalization of HIV in some communities. These factors may be evident in the numbers of
ancestral (racial/ethnic) or other minority persons who are prosecuted for HIV-related crimes or
for sentencing enhancements when HIV is a factor in criminal proceedings [12,15]. The structural
factors of racism and sexism have been documented as determinants of health and contribute to
adverse health outcomes among PLWH globally [42,43]. Racism and sexism are forms of
domination that result in oppressive power imbalances in societies [44]. Racial and sexual
minorities in Canada and the United States have been dis proportionately affected by the HIV
epidemic and racial minorities experience higher rates of criminal prosecutions than other
members of these societies. Sexism and homophobia have been attributed to the gender
hierarchies in society [45]. Homophobia has been termed a weapon of sexism [46] and has been
documented as a factor influencing the health and health outcomes of PLWH [47]. The
criminalization of HIV and homophobia in Canada and the United States may adversely affect
HIV prevention and treatment efforts among racial and sexual minority groups [912,14,15,26,48,49]. 6

Conclusion
I highly recommend an inclusion of a HIV status in a decriminalization topic. Broad scale
interrogation of policies concerning HIV-positivity, as well as overall portrayal of HIV throughout
society, is a discussion that would be beneficial for a community that prides itself on discussing the timely
and societally relevant issues. Considering that fact that HIV is overwhelmingly still considered a death
sentence in the United States, when in reality with modern science it should rather be seen as a chronic
illness, this discussion is definitely societally relevant. Also, with the international push for actions
concerning HIV status, this issue could not be timelier.

Citations
1. Stephen R. Latham, "Time to Decriminalize HIV Status," Hastings Center Report 43, no. 5 (2013): 1213.
2. David Crary, Critics assail crime laws aimed at people with HIV, Associated Press , January 2, 2012

3. Terrence McKeegan, UN and Planned Parenthood seek to decriminalize willful HIV infection, Dec 10,
2010, http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/un-and-planned-parenthood-sponsor-campaign-todecriminalize-willful-hiv-inf
4. Ibid
5. Phillips et al., Associations between the legal context of HIV, perceived social capital, and HIV
antiretroviral adherence in North America, BMC Public Health 2013, 13:736
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/13/736
6. Ibid

*Immigration
Introduction
We just debated immigration, so it is probably too early to revisit it as an area. Additionally, it is also
probably far too large of a topic to just be thrown into the list of areas for this topic. That being said, if
the topic committee chooses to offer the community a verb stem that suggests, fully decriminalize with
a large list, then immigration should be included in that list. In that world there would be only one
affirmative that would have to deal with lots of PICS and disads. However, it would be worth discussing
as it is, and will remain, a timely issue.
Solvency Advocate for Decriminalization

ROMERO 11 Maureen B. Cavanaugh Distinguished Faculty Scholar & Professor of

Law, Penn State [Romero, Victor C., Decriminalizing Border Crossings, Penn State Dickinson School
of Law, HeinOnline -- 38 Fordham Urb. L.J. 273 2010-2011]
An international border crosser should only be deemed a criminal if the United States government can
prove that, with requisite criminal intent, she engaged in an act aside from crossing the border that would
constitute a crime. No longer should crossing the border be a strict liability criminal offense. Doing so
will restore balance to the civil immigration system, conserve scarce enforcement resources to target
truly criminal behavior, enhance our standing abroad, and help heal our racially-polarized discourse on
immigration policy.
IN short, Romero, as well as a few other authors, advocate a formal decriminalization of immigration
offenses. The advantages would be large, and I wont go into detail right now. The disadvantages would
most likely also be similar to the ones from the immigration topic the community debated five years ago.
The best argument in favor of including this in the topic area list would be the need to have debates about
actual immigration issues and not just visas.

Suggested topic Wording:

Decriminalize immigration into the United States.

Citations:
Hartry, Allison S. "Gendering Crimmigration: The Intersection of Gender, Immigration, and the Criminal
Justice System." Berkeley J. Gender L. & Just. 27 (2012): 1.
Hernandez, Michael. "Rule of Law, Historical Equity, and Mexican Contra Prohibition Immigrants, The."
Regent J. Int'l L. 9 (2012): 29.
Kidane, Won. "Reflections on Professor Romeros Insight on the Decriminalization of Border Crossings."
Fordham Urban Law Journal 39 (2012): 19.
Kim, Kathleen. "Perspectives on Immigration Reform." Loy. LAL Rev. 44 (2010): 1323.

KOELSCH, DAVID C. "EMBRACING MERCY: REHABILITATION AS A MEANS TO FAIRLY AND

EFFICIENTLY ADDRESS IMMIGRATION VIOLATIONS." Intercultural Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 8 (2013):
323-451.
Romero, Victor C. "Immigration Law, Contracts, and Due Process: A Response to Professor Won
Kidane's Review of Everyday Law for Immigrants." (2010): 903.
Romero, Victor. "On Borders and Crimes: A Reply to Won Kidane." (2012).
Romero, Victor C. "Our Illegal Founders." Harv. Latino L. Rev. 16 (2013): 147-169.

Narcotics
Introduction
Marijuana is obviously the more likely legalization act to see. However, the literature base is not limited
to that drug. There are numerous scholarly and philosophical defenses of a total legalization of narcotics.
For an older, but thorough solvency advocate, one should start with the 1990 Hofstra Law Review
symposium on the benefits of overall decriminalization.

SCHULER & McBRIDE 90 * Director of Client Services at Law Journal

Information Systems, New York Law Publishing Company ** Arthur McBride is
the pseudonym of an employee of a law enforcement agency in the New York
metropolitan area who specializes in narcotics cases [John T. Schuler * and Arthur McBride
**, A Symposium on Drug Decriminalization: Notes from the Front: A Dissident Law-Enforcement
Perspective on Drug Prohibition, Hofstra Law Review, Spring 1990, 18 Hofstra L. Rev. 893]
The literature about overall narcotic legalization is constantly being updated and developed. For
example:
Lots of discussion within criminology literature
ROBERTS 14 [Roberts, Melinda R. "Decriminalization and Legalization." The Encyclopedia of
Theoretical Criminology (2014).]
One of the most controversial debates in criminology surrounds the decriminalization and legalization of
drugs. Public policy and drug laws continue to change, based on varied theoretical arguments and the
repercussions of the war on drugs. Evaluations of drug enforcement and policy produce mixed results
as researchers evaluate the link between drugs and crime.
One article from 2010 defends an absolute decriminalization of drug laws in the US. While a little older,
the article provides great citations in defense of an aff that changes the way courts deal with drug use. It
would easily be the best way to engage in war on drugs bad on the affirmative.

KREIT 10 [Kreit, Alex. "Decriminalization Option: Should States Consider Moving from a Criminal to
a Civil Drug Court Model, The." U. Chi. Legal F. (2010): 299.]
Finally, for both the aff and the neg, international drug trafficking is obviously a major issue for a lot of
countries. That would provide the easiest way for teams to talk about big impacts and global problems.
Jenner, Matthew S. "International drug trafficking: A global problem with a domestic solution." Indiana
Journal of Global Legal Studies 18.2 (2011): 901-927.

Negative Ground
Drugs are bad would obviously be a large part of the negative strategy against an aff that legalized all
narcotics.

For a more in depth discussion of the possible negative arguments, the negative section in marijuana use
would probably provide ideas for the generic ways to approach the topic area.
Finally, much like marijuana, counterplans that alter the status quo enforcement mechanisms, provide a
different means of deterrence, or attack the production side of narcotics all insure that the neg should have
plenty of ground versus most of the drug prohibition affs on the topic.

Other Cites
Blickman, Tom, and Martin Jelsma. "Drug policy reform in practice." Transnational Institute 19 (2009).
Brenner, Todd Austin. "Legalization of Drugs: Why Prolong the Inevitable, The." Cap. UL Rev. 18
(1989): 237.
Columbia University. Center on Addiction, and Substance Abuse. Legalization: panacea or Pandora's box.
No. 1. CASA, 1995.
Corlett, J. Angelo. "Taking drugs very seriously." Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 38.2 (2013): 235248.
Di Noto, Paul. "Should the United States Decriminalize Illicit Drugs?."
http://faculty.stedwards.edu/s_acaps4360/docs/DiNoto_Decriminalization.doc
Drug Free Australias Arguments Against Drug Legalisation,
http://www.drugfree.org.au/fileadmin/Media/Global/Taskforce_Arguments_for_Prohibition.pdf
Gratton, Kaitlin C. "Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures: Reclassifying Drug Possession
Offenses in Response to the Indigent Defense Crisis." Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 53 (2011): 1039.
Gray, James. Why our drug laws have failed: a judicial indictment of war on drugs. Temple University
Press, 2010.
Hunt, Lester H. "Epilogue: what good are drugs anyway?." Criminal Justice Ethics 22.1 (2003): 46-49.
Husak, Douglas. Four points about drug decriminalization. Criminal Justice Ethics, Vol. 22, Iss. 1, 2003
Husak, Douglas. "Predicting the Future: A Bad Reason to Criminalize Drug Use." Utah L. Rev. (2009):
105.
Husak, Doug, and Peter De Marneffe. The legalization of drugs. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Kreit, Alex. "Beyond the Prohibition Debate: Thoughts on Federal Drug Laws in an Age of State
Reforms." Chap. L. Rev. 13 (2009): 555.
Miller, Joel. Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America. Thomas Nelson Inc, 2004.
Shapiro, Daniel. "Individual rights, drug policy, and the worstcase Scenario." Criminal Justice Ethics
22.1 (2003): 41-45.
Smith, Paul. "Drugs, morality and the law." Journal of Applied Philosophy 19.3 (2002): 233-244.

Woods, Jordan Blair. "Decade after Drug Decriminalization: What Can the United States Learn from the
Portuguese Model, A." UDC/DSL L. Rev. 15 (2011): 1.
Zawisza, Christina A., and Sandra Newcombe. "Problem-Solving Courts: An Annotated Bibliography."
Mental Health L. & Pol'y J. 2 (2013): 173.

Public Order Offenses

Background for this section
For a long time, vagrancy was a crime in much of the US. The name vagrancy might suggest that
these laws were solely designed to crack-down on homelessness. In reality, such laws bled into a host of
social issues including class, race, and age discrimination as well as discrimination on the basis of
disability.
Generally speaking, vagrancy laws have been struck down at least through avoiding use of that
specific term (USSC decision in Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville).
That said, governments have still sought vague rules to manage specific behaviors mostly through a
series of public order offenses.
Some State and Local laws/ordinances that the Topic Committee could consider adding to various
wording options follow.

Homelessness
The first idea might be to consider including decriminalization of homelessness (better put, laws that are
tailored to homeless populations).
This might include decriminalizing some of the following items:

The Law Center 11 [The NLCHP refers to itself as the Law Center. Its full title is The National
Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. They are a persistent voice on behalf of homeless Americans,
speaking effectively to federal, state, and local policy makers. The Center employs three main strategies:
impact litigation, policy advocacy, and public education. The Center also produces investigative reports
and provides legal and policy support to local organizations. Criminalizing Crisis: The Criminalization
of Homelessness in U.S. Cities a November 2011 report. http://www.nlchp.org/Criminalizing_Crisis.]
Since the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (the Law Center) and the National Coalition for the Homeless released
their last report on the criminalization of homelessness , Homes Not Handcuffs, in July 2009, the housing and
homelessness crisis in the United States has deepened significantly. In its 2010 survey of 27 large cities, the U.S. Conference of
Mayors observed that 52 percent of cities have seen in increase in overall homelessness, while 58 percent have
seen an increase in family homelessness. Further, across the surveyed cities, an average of 27 percent of homeless
people were turned away from emergency shelter due to lack of space .1 Despite the fact that communities
all over the country lack adequate affordable housing and shelter space , cities are continuing to penalize
people forced to live on our streets and in public spaces. Criminalization measures often prohibit activities like as
sleeping/camping, eating, sitting, and/or begging in public spaces and include criminal penalties for violations of these
laws. Some cities have even enacted restrictions that punish groups and individuals for serving food to
homeless people. Many of these measures appear to be designed to move homeless persons out of sight, or even out of a given city.
Criminalizing Crisis, the Law Centers tenth report on the criminalization of homelessness,2 provides an overview of the criminalization
measures in place across the country, as well as guidance on how advocates can combat them and promote more constructive alternatives. The
report summarizes the results of a national survey by the Law Center on the enforcement of criminalization measures across the country, as well
as a survey of the particular laws in place in 234 cities and the changes in those laws since our 2009 report. Criminalizing Crisis reviews the costs
and other impacts of criminalization and includes recommendations for policy change. The report concludes that criminalization measures do
nothing to solve the problem of homelessness. Instead, they frequently perpetuate homelessness, place unnecessary burdens on our criminal
justice system, and violate homeless individuals civil and human rights. The reports comprehensive Advocacy Manual provides guidance and
tools for advocates.

Types of Criminalization Measures

The criminalization of homelessness takes many forms, including:

 Enactment and enforcement of laws that make it illegal to sleep, sit, or store personal belongings in the
public spaces of cities without sufficient shelter or affordable housing.
Selective enforcement against homeless persons of seemingly neutral laws , such as loitering, jaywalking, or open
container ordinances.
Sweeps of city areas in which homeless persons live in order to drive them out of those areas, frequently resulting in the
destruction of individuals personal property, including important personal documents and medication.
Enactment and enforcement of laws that punish people for begging or panhandling in
order to move poor or homeless persons out of a city or downtown area .
Enactment

and enforcement of laws that restrict groups sharing food with homeless persons in public spaces.

Enforcement of quality of life ordinances related to public activities and hygiene (e.g. public urination) when no public
facilities are available to people without housing.

This website lists the five meanest cities in term of ordinances crafted against the homeless. Many
of us in the Debate Community work, live, or travel to these cities:

NCH 05 [National Coalition for the Homeless Executive Summary: A Dream Denied: The Criminalization of
Homelessness in U.S. Cities November 1st, 2005. Page last modified: January 10, 2013
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/summary.html]

An unfortunate trend in cities around the country over the past 25 years has been to turn to the criminal justice
system to respond to people living in public spaces. This trend includes measures that target homeless
persons by making it illegal to perform life-sustaining activities in public . These measures prohibit activities
such as sleeping/camping, eating, sitting, and begging in public spaces , usually including criminal penalties for violation
of these laws. This report is the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) fourth report on the criminalization of homelessness and the
National Law Center on Homelessness & Povertys (NLCHP) eighth report on the topic. The report documents the top 20 worst
offenders of 2005, as well as initiatives in some cities that are more constructive approaches to the issue of
people living in public spaces. The report includes the results of a survey of laws and practices in 224 cities around the country, as well
as a survey of lawsuits from various jurisdictions in which those measures have been challenged. Types of Criminalization Measures The
criminalization of homelessness takes many forms , including: Legislation that makes it illegal to sleep,

sit, or

store personal belongings in public spaces in cities where people are forced to live in public spaces; Selective
enforcement of more neutral laws, such as loitering or open container laws, against homeless persons; Sweeps of city areas
where homeless persons are living to drive them out of the area, frequently resulting in the destruction of those persons personal property,
including important personal documents and medication; and Laws that punish people for begging or panhandling to move

poor or homeless persons out of a city or downtown area. Criminalization Measures Have Increased City ordinances frequently serve as
a prominent tool to criminalize homelessness. Of the 224 cities surveyed for our report: 28% prohibit camping in particular public places in the
city and 16% had city-wide prohibitions on camping. 27% prohibit sitting/lying in certain public places. 39% prohibit loitering in particular
public areas and 16% prohibit loitering city-wide. 43% prohibit begging in particular public places; 45% prohibit aggressive panhandling and
21% have city-wide prohibitions on begging. The trend of criminalizing homelessness appears to be growing. Of the 67 cities surveyed in both
NCH and NLCHPs last joint report in 2002 and in this report: There is a 12% increase laws prohibiting begging in certain public places and an
18% increase in laws that prohibit aggressive panhandling. There is a 14% increase in laws prohibiting sitting or lying in certain public spaces.
There is a 3% increase in laws prohibiting loitering, loafing, or vagrancy laws. Another trend documented in the report is increased city efforts to
target homeless persons indirectly by placing restrictions on providers serving food to poor and homeless persons in public spaces. While cities
are cracking down on homeless persons living in public spaces, according to the latest U.S. Conference of Mayors Hunger and Homelessness
report, cities do not have adequate shelter to meet the need: 71% of the 24 cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported a 6%
increase in requests for emergency shelter. 16% of overall emergency shelter requests went unmet and 32% of emergency shelter requests by
homeless families went unmet in cities surveyed.

The Meanest Cities

Although some of the reports top 20 meanest cities have made some efforts to address homelessness in their communities, the punitive practices
highlighted in the report impede progress in solving the problem. The top 20 meanest cities were chosen based on the number of anti-homeless
laws in the city, the enforcement of those laws and severities of penalties, the general political climate toward homeless people in the city, local
advocate support for the meanest designation, the citys history of criminalization measures, and the existence of pending or recently enacted
criminalization legislation in the city. Over the past year, the practices in the following top 5 meanest cities stand out as

some of the worst examples of inhumane city treatment of homeless and poor people:
#1 Sarasota, FL. After two successive Sarasota anti-lodging laws were overturned as unconstitutional by state courts, Sarasota passed a
third law banning lodging outdoors. This latest version appears to be explicitly aimed at homeless persons. One of the elements necessary for
arrest under the law is that the person has no other place to live.

#2 Lawrence, KS.

After a group of downtown Lawrence business leaders urged the city to cut social services and pass ordinances to

target homeless persons, the city passed three civility ordinances, including an aggressive panhandling law, a law prohibiting trespass on
rooftops, and a law limiting sleeping or sitting on city sidewalks.

#3 Little Rock, AR.

Homeless persons have reported being kicked out of bus stations in Little Rock, even when they had valid bus

tickets. Two homeless men reported that officers of the Little Rock Police Department, in separate incidents, had kicked them out of the Little
Rock Bus Station, even after showing the police their tickets. In other instances, homeless persons have been told that they could not wait at the
bus station "because you are homeless."

#4 Atlanta, GA.

Amid waves of public protest and testimony opposing the Mayors proposed comprehensive ban on panhandling, the

City Council passed the anti-panhandling ordinance in August 2005. In the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Atlanta stood firm in its
resolve to criminalize panhandlers. A Katrina evacuee who was sleeping in his car with his family after seeking refuge in Atlanta was arrested for
panhandling at a mall in the affluent Buckhead neighborhood, even after he showed the police his Louisiana drivers license, car tag, and
registration as proof that he was a Katrina evacuee. In addition, during the first week in December, the Atlanta Zoning Review Board approved a
ban on supportive housing inside the city limits.

#5 Las Vegas, NV.

Even as the city shelters are overcrowded and the citys Crisis Intervention Center recently closed due to lack of

funding, the city continues to target homeless persons living outside. The police conduct habitual sweeps of encampments which lead to
extended jail time for repeat misdemeanor offenders. In order to keep homeless individuals out of future parks, the city considered privatizing the
parks, enabling owners to kick out unwanted people. Mayor Oscar Goodman fervently supported the idea, saying, I dont want them there.
Theyre not going to be there. Im not going to let it happen. They think Im mean now; wait until the homeless try to go over there.
Criminalization Measures Are Bad Policy and Violate Constitutional Rights
These practices that criminalize homelessness do nothing to address the underlying causes of homelessness.

Instead, they exacerbate the problem. They frequently move people away from services. When homeless persons are
arrested and charged under these measures, they develop a criminal record, making it more difficult to obtain
employment or housing. Further, criminalization measures are not cost efficient. In a nine-city survey of supportive housing and jail
costs, jail costs were on average two to three times the cost of supportive housing.

The same website lists Constructive Alternatives to Criminalization citing cities that have
crafted creative remedies to the aforementioned issues. This section may begin to help develop ideas
for mechanism, plan, and counterplan ideas:

NCH 05 [National Coalition for the Homeless Executive Summary: A Dream Denied: The Criminalization of
Homelessness in U.S. Cities November 1st, 2005. Page last modified: January 10, 2013
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/summary.html]

Constructive Alternatives to Criminalization

While many cities engage in practices that exacerbate the problem of homelessness by pursuing
criminalization measures, more constructive approaches do exist in some cities around the country. The
following examples can serve as more constructive approaches to homelessness:
Broward County, FL. The Taskforce for Ending Homelessness, Inc., a not-for-profit agency that
provides outreach, education, and advocacy services for the homeless population in Broward County, has
partnered with the Ft. Lauderdale police department to create an outreach team made up of police officers
and a civilian outreach worker who is formerly homeless. In its five years of operation, the Homeless
Outreach Team has had over 23,000 contacts with homeless individuals and has placed 11,384 people in
shelters. Estimates suggest that there are at least 2,400 fewer arrests each year as a result of the Homeless
Outreach Team.
Pasadena, CA. The Pasadena Police Department and the Los Angeles Department of Health have
partnered to form the Homeless Outreach Psychiatric Evaluation (HOPE) Team. The program created
three teams of mental health and law enforcement officials to provide compassionate assistance to persons
in need of mental health assessment and services.
Ohio. In Ohio, the three largest cities, Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, fund teams of trained
workers to go out under the bridges and visit the encampments near the rivers to assist those outside the
service system. The critical component to the success of these programs is that they do not put a lot of
restrictions on the assistance that they are offering and offer help at non-traditional hours when other

services are closed, providing a vital link between mainstream services and a population that resists
congregate living.
Washington, DC. The downtown business community in Washington, D.C., created a day center for
homeless people who may not have anywhere to go during the day when shelters are closed. Through the
Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District, business owners fund this day center that can serve up to
260 people per day, with indoor seating, laundry, showers, and a morning meal.
San Diego, CA . In 1989, a public defender from San Diego created the nations first Homeless Court
Program, which is a special monthly Superior Court session held at local shelters for homeless defendants
to resolve outstanding misdemeanor criminal cases. Homeless courts expand access to the judicial system
and assist homeless defendants by addressing outstanding warrants and criminal offenses to remove
barriers to benefits, treatment, housing, and employment.
For those interested in investigating how homelessness and (de)criminalization activities may affect their
own local communities, the following website provides narratives and information for many, many cities
across the nation:
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/allcities.html

Loitering
A second idea might be decriminalization of Loitering and associated Public Order ordinances
Loitering laws (which make it illegal to stand or hang around, even if no apparent criminal activity is
taking place) tend to be over-enforced on the basis of age, class, and race.
This article speaks to the efforts that advocates from Chicago deployed, as they successfully got the US
Supreme Court to strike-down a particularly vague loitering law in their City. That decision (USSC, City
of Chicago v. Morales) was powerful, but has hardly stopped efforts to pursue the public order agenda.
The case against loitering and public order ordinances starts with denouncing the idea of selective
enforcement. The advantage areas could include social injustice and a fundamental questioning of the
effectiveness of such laws as a crime-control strategy.
The case in favor public order could go many directions but could include defending such ordinances
on the grounds that they help the very communities that the anti-loitering crowd seeks to assist. This
article shows how a Negative may have ground that considers as opposed to ignores the vantage point
of communities that presently lack socio-economic privilege.
This article frames both sides of the debate over loitering:
ROSENTHAL 01 [2000-2001 edition, LAWRENCE ROSENTHAL, Deputy Corporation Counsel,
City of Chicago Department of Law. GANG LOITERING AND RACE THE JOURNAL OF
CRIMINAL LAW & CRIMINOLOGY vol 91:1]
When the United States Supreme Court held in City of Chicago v. Morales that Chicago's anti-gang loitering
ordinance authorizing the police to disperse groups of loiterers containing criminal street gang members --was
unconstitutionally vague, Harvey Grossman, the attorney who had argued the case for the winning side,
called the decision "a victory for 'young men of color.' ' 3 That may seem a strange thing to say about a case in which no
claim of racial discrimination was made by the parties or passed upon by the Court,4 but Mr. Grossman's reaction was far from
idiosyncratic. Questions of racial fairness are consistently raised by the critics of anti-loitering and
other public order laws. Dorothy Roberts, for example, sees the Court's holding in Morales as reflecting a concern about the risk of racial
bias in the enforcement of public order laws.6 Under Chicago's anti-gang loitering ordinance, she contends, the potential

for police abuse was especially high: "With no criminal conduct to go by, police officers probably used
race as a critical factor in judging whether an individual might be a gang member., 7 The inevitable racial
friction that this type of law will produce, Professor Roberts argues, reinforces patterns of racial subjugation. 8
David Cole makes a similar argument and adds that when minorities perceive this type of unfairness in the criminal justice system they "have less
incentive to play by the rules, and accordingly, double standards in law enforcement actually contribute to criminal

conduct in those neighborhoods that are already most at risk of criminal behavior for socioeconomic
reasons."9 The decision in Morales makes the questions raised by Professors Roberts and Cole even more urgent. The Court found the
ordinance vague because it permitted enforcement against loiterers engaged in entirely "innocent" activities, but added that a law directed at
loitering by groups containing gang members would sufficiently limit enforcement discretion "if the ordinance only applied to loitering that had
an apparently harmful purpose or effect... ."'Justice O'Connor, in a concurring opinion joined by Justice Breyer, added that an antigang loitering
law should be upheld if it defined loitering as "to remain in any one place with no apparent purpose other than to establish control over
identifiable areas, to intimidate others from entering those areas, or to conceal illegal activities."" Thus, the Court appears to have endorsed antiloitering laws when loitering has an "apparently harmful purpose or effect"; a standard for judging loitering laws far more lenient than can be
found in prior precedents.' Chicago has taken the Court's hint. The Chicago City Council recently enacted a new

antigang loitering ordinance that authorizes police officers to order groups containing members of
criminal street gangs to disperse when they are engaged in "gang loitering . The new ordinance defines "gang
loitering" as "remaining in any one place under circumstances that would warrant a reasonable person to believe that the purpose or effect of that
behavior is to enable a criminal street gang to establish control over identifiable areas, to intimidate others from entering those areas, or to
conceal illegal activities."'4 The new ordinance also defines "criminal street gang" in terms that track the federal racketeering statute's definition
of "racketeering activity."'5 The City Council enacted a companion anti-drug loitering measure as well. ' While
narrower than the original anti-gang loitering ordinance, these revised measures nevertheless provide a potent prophylactic policing tool: they
authorize dispersal orders whenever the police reasonably believe that gang or drug activity is afoot. Indeed, a nationwide trend

seems to be underway to enact anti-loitering laws as part of the movement toward com-munity-oriented
and order-maintenance policing. And because laws drafted to comply with the Morales decision are
likely to withstand attack on other grounds, future debate on the fairness of public order laws is
likely to focus on whether they can be fairly applied to racial minorities .'8 To date, the debate over
public order laws has largely been framed in terms of the supposed virtues and vices of order maintenance
as a policing strategy. The advocates of public order laws argue that visible disorder in a community stimulates the commission of more
serious crimes,' 9 and that a policing strategy based on order maintenance is of particular benefit in inner-city minority communities, where social
disorder is a particularly serious problem.2 Critics of public order laws take the opposite tack; they question the relationship between disorder and
crime,2' and argue that the police are likely to unfairly target persons of color as "disorderly." 22 Largely missing from this debate,

however, is an effort to evaluate public order laws in light of the considerable research that has been done
in the past few decades on the ecology of the inner city. That research, I will argue, suggests a different
kind of case to be made on behalf of public order laws.

Thus, in an effort to advance the debate over public order laws,

I will focus not on the controversial relationship between disorder and crime, but on the ecology of the inner city. In particular, I intend to focus
on the work identifying an inner-city, disproportionately minority "underclass," and on the implications of that concept for crime control.

Underclass theorists assert that as a consequence of structural changes in the economy, coupled with the
continuing effects of racism, an "underclass" has emerged that faces much more restricted opportunities
for upward mobility than existed in the urban slums of earlier eras. I focus on the concept of an "underclass" not only
because it has such wide acceptance among students of the inner city, but also because it sheds so much
light on the racial dimension of inequality in America. Underclass theory's special value lies in its ability to explain why the
traditional vehicles for upward mobility have failed so many inner-city minorities. There have been insufficient attempts, however, to apply the
teachings of underclass theory to criminal justice policy, and, in particular, to gang crime, the particular form of lawlessness that most profoundly
affects inner-city underclass communities. This effort to consider the implications of underclass theory for inner-city gang crime begins with the
evidence showing the dimensions of the problem that gang crime poses for the inner city. The emergence of entrenched criminal street gangs, I
will then argue, is the natural consequence of the emergence of an entrenched urban underclass.24 Gang crime in an underclass community has a
predictable pattern, resulting in a thoroughly destabilized and demoralized community in which drug trafficking comes to be seen as one of the
few economic opportunities available. Unless rampant gang criminality in underclass neighborhoods is curbed, the

ability of other social and economic policies to ameliorate the plight of underclass communities is at best
limited. I will also argue that an anti-loitering strategy is a vehicle for attacking conditions conducive to the
success of street gangs without relying on mass incarceration strategies that impose enormously
disproportionate burdens on minorities. From the standpoint of racial fairness, I will contend that the use
of public order laws is preferable to conventional law enforcement strategies, both because public order
laws address conditions that facilitate the success of inner-city gangs through relatively moderate police tactics, and

because they are less susceptible to police abuse than the tactics that they replace . The approach to criminal
justice policy taken here long ago went out of fashion. In this era of harshly punitive criminal laws based on theories of retribution and
deterrence, an effort to identify the root causes of inner-city crime may seem to many beside the point. But in my view, it is time

for a
rigorous reassessment of criminal justice policy in light of all that we have learned about the sociology
and political economy of the inner city in the last thirty years-an inquiry rarely undertaken in the debate
over public order laws. If poverty and racism are at the root of inner city crime, then the fairness of the
harshly punitive regime reflected in current criminal justice policy--especially as represented by drug
trafficking laws-is properly open to question. The sociology and political economy of the inner city also suggests, however,
that if law enforcement is given no role to play in suppressing inner city crime, it is naive to think innercity
communities can be revitalized. Public order laws , I will suggest, can serve the twin goals of promoting racial
fairness and revitalizing the inner city.

Public Sobriety
A third idea might be Decriminalization of Public Inebriation and Open Container Laws. These laws tend
to be selectively enforced and over-enforced against specific populations. This article cites the impact
such policies have on social justice but also speaks to the empirical success taken by some non-state
actors. The Affirmative could defend comparable strategies under a passive-voice topic:

Weinstein 10 [Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' new copy editor. Before coming to Mother Jones, he
worked at the Wall Street Journal and the Village Voice. His writing has also appeared in the New York
Times and on Newsweek.com. He is a Navy veteran and a two-day Jeopardy champion, He's currently at
work on a book about his recession-fueled stint as a military contractor in Iraq. Cop Walks Into a Bar
And...Arrests You. For Having a Drink : Texas bizarre, racist liquor laws March/April 2010 Issue
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/texas-racist-laws-drinking-while-brown]
They say everything's bigger in Texas, and that includes absurdity in law enforcement. Most states and
towns have public intoxication laws that allow peace officers to pick up the drunk and disorderly. But in
the Lone Star State, the nation's broadest PI law lets cops go virtually anywhere and arrest anyone for
drunkennesseven if they're quietly nursing a beer in a bar .
Arrested for drinking in a bar? Sounds like the ultimate catch-22. Since 2006, when Texas overtook California as the state with the most drunkdriving fatalities, cops and a beefed-up task force from the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission have used a 1993 law as a pretext to enter any
bar and arrest its patrons on the spot. The public intoxication standard, backed by the Texas-based Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is

so broad that you can be arrested on just a police officer's hunch, without being given a Breathalyzer or
field sobriety test. State courts have not only upheld the practice but expanded the definition of public intoxication
to cover pretty much any situation, says Robert Guest, a criminal defense attorney in Dallas. "Having no standard allows
the police to arrest whoever pisses them off and call it PI," he says, adding, "If you have a violent, homophobic, or
just an asshole of a cop and you give him the arbitrary power to arrest anyone for PI , you can expect violent, homophobic,
and asshole-ic behavior."

For some officers, PI has provided a ready-made reason for detaining minorities . A Houston defense
attorney, who asks to be unnamed since he specializes in misdemeanors such as PI, puts it this way: "If you're brown and
you're aroundyou're going down." Nick Novello, a 27-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, blew the whistle on three
colleagues who he claims filled their arrest quotas by picking up people, mostly minorities, for PI. "They were illegally arrested," Novello says.
"It's an absolute perversion." (Two were removed from the force.)
According to a recent report by sociology and law professors at the University of California-Berkeley, the Dallas

suburb of Irving has used "discretionary" public intoxication arrests to fish for undocumented immigrants.
After partnering with federal immigration officials in 2006 to check local prisoners' residency status, Irving police
increased the number of Latinos they nicked for PI and other Class C misdemeanors by 150 percent, while arrests of
whites and African Americans for those offenses fell. The Mexican consul issued an advisory telling migrants to

avoid Irving. "In this city, one has to be extra careful," he told a Spanish-language newspaper. "They were clearly
choosing to bring more Hispanics into jail," says Aarti Kohli, coauthor of the Berkeley study. But the feds and local officials
hailed the PI sweeps as a victory. Immigration "is expanding this program, saying, 'Isn't this great?'" Kohli says. "But the question they're not
asking is: How are these people getting put into jail?"

After community activists took to the streets and airwaves, Irving's arrest rate for Hispanics plummeted .
(Dallas and Irving are no longer part of the federal program.) In Fort Worth, protests over the Rainbow Lounge raid
elicited a quick apology from the police chief and promises to review the PI policy. But the arrests have
continued elsewhere, and no one is targeting the public intoxication law itself. Many people don't
care, Novello says, "because they can't vicariously experience this injustice." The Houston attorney puts it more bluntly.
"As long as police are going out there fucking with the blacks and the Mexicans, until it hits the people with the power, they
won't care."
Events in Austin, Texas can be read in many ways. If nothing else, it frames the importance of
debates over decriminalizing PI laws. This article again gets at mechanism questions and whether
decriminalization options sufficiently counter the discretion of police officers.

Flatow 14 [Nicole Flatow is the Deputy Editor of ThinkProgress Justice. Previously, she was Associate
Director of Communications for the American Constitution Society. Nicole has also worked for several
legal and general circulation newspapers, including The Daily Record and The New York Law Journal,
and was a legal fellow at Bread for the City, where she represented low-income D.C. residents in housing
and public benefits matters. She received her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, and her
B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Law from Binghamton University. Ten Percent Of Austin Arrests Are
For Public Intoxication, And This County Might Do Something About It Think Progress March 11,
2014 http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/03/11/3385481/ten-percent-of-austin-arrests-are-for-publicintoxication-and-the-county-might-do-something-about-it/]
In the past five years, 27,000

people have been arrested in Austin, Texas, for the offense known as public
intoxication, making up a whopping ten percent of all arrests. By the accounts of those on the ground,
these laws have been targeted at minorities and gays in at least several prominent instances, with cops seeking out
bars with particular demographics in the early morning hours to snag those who have had a few drinks.
They dont have to implement a Breathalyzer or field sobriety test . They dont have to have suspicion for hanging out
outside particular bars. They just have to be based on a police officer suspicion.
A 27-year-veteran of the Dallas Police Department commented to Mother Jones in 2010 that, while individuals have been outraged by reported
incidents of targeting gays and minorities, no one would move to reform the underlying law [a]s long as police are going out there fucking with
the blacks and the Mexicans, and not the people with power.

But as we have seen around the country in recent years, there is another motivation for criminal justice reforms like this: money. The arrest,
jailing, and public defense of these public intoxicants by city police is costing county officials money,
and they dont like it.
So they are calling for the creation of what is known as a sobriety center where individuals deemed
publicly intoxicated would be sent to dry out instead of being funneled into the criminal justice system.
According to the Austin American-Statesman, this initiative to create what are colloquially known as drunk tanks would
effectively decriminalize public intoxication , although its not clear whether thats true, since police
would seemingly retain the discretion to decide how to handle each case . Similar centers already exist
in San Antonio and Houston, where arrests have reportedly dropped precipitously. And they are
also common in other cities around the country including Boise, Denver, and San Francisco.

Panhandling

A fourth idea may be decriminalization of panhandling.

Because they tend to be seen as violating freedom of speech, laws broadly banning panhandling have
been struck down. This has occurred on an ad hoc basis and many overly-vague panhandling laws still
exist.

Michael Scott 02 [Michael S. Scott is the director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, Inc. and clinical
professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. Scott holds a law degree from Harvard Law School and a
bachelors degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was formerly chief of police in Lauderhill, Florida; served in
various civilian administrative positions in the St. Louis Metropolitan, Ft. Pierce, Florida, and New York City police departments.
Panhandling
Guide No.13 (2002) http://www.popcenter.org/problems/panhandling/3]

Response With Limited Effectiveness Enforcing laws that prohibit all panhandling. Many laws that
prohibit all panhandling were written long ago and are vaguely and broadly worded: consequently, they are
unlikely to survive a legal challenge. About half of the states and over a third of major cities in
America have laws that prohibit all or some forms of panhandling .117
While the Aff might have ground to go after dated laws, the contemporary terrain has shifted. State and
localities have started to redefine restrictions around aggressive and dangerous panhandling. Even
these pivots face legal challenges.

FROSCH 12 DAN FROSCH reporter for NYT Homeless Are Fighting Back Against Panhandling
Bans New York Times October 5, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/us/homeless-arefighting-back-in-court-against-panhandling-bans.html?_r=0
Mr. Evans said he had received more than 50 panhandling citations, and cases like his have become
increasingly common of late. With the downturn in the economy, cities across the country have been
cracking down on an apparent rise in aggressive panhandling , while advocates for the homeless and civil
liberties groups contend that sweeping bans on begging go too far . According to a report by the National Law Center on
Homelessness and Poverty that examined 188 cities, there was a 7 percent increase in prohibitions on begging or
panhandling between 2009 and 2011. Our sense is that cities are responding to the increasing number of chronically or visibly homeless
people due to the economic crisis, said Heather Maria Johnson, a civil rights lawyer for the group. Rather than addressing the issue of
homelessness, they are adapting measures that move homeless people out of downtowns, tourist areas or even out of a city. Case law

on
the issue has varied over the years , and local panhandling laws differ widely. But several recent legal decisions have
favored the homeless. Last January, after Mr. Evanss initial lawsuit, Salt Lake City agreed to stop enforcing
the state statute. But Utah fought the suit, arguing that panhandling near roads was dangerous . A federal
judge sided with Mr. Evans in March, ruling that the statute was unconstitutional. In June, the City of Draper
agreed to stop enforcing the ordinance after Mr. Evans filed suit there as well. After a lawsuit filed by a
homeless man and a disabled veteran who were arrested on panhandling charges in Grand Rapids , Mich., a
federal judge ruled in August that the states blanket ban on public begging also violated the First
Amendment. Michigans attorney general, Bill Schuette, has appealed, arguing that begging is not protected
speech. In many cases, the dispute over panhandling centers on whether a citys efforts to criminalize
aggressive begging to protect pedestrians and businesses ends up overreaching. After the Northern California city of
Arcata passed an ordinance banning panhandling in 2010, a local resident, Richard Salzman, sued in State Superior
Court in Humboldt County. Mr. Salzman, 53, an agent for commercial illustrators, said he had no problem with Arcatas efforts to curb aggressive
panhandling. But he objected to the city long known for its liberal leanings also prohibiting panhandling that was not

necessarily threatening on its face, like merely asking for money within 20 feet of the entrance to a store or
restaurant. I dont know how much more passive you can be than standing there silently holding a sign, he said. This is a slippery slope we

dont want to go down. Last month, Judge Dale A. Reinholtsen

ruled that Arcatas law was indeed too broad and

struck down most provisions that prohibited all panhandling in specific locations.
Conversations have shifted moving in the direction of decriminalizing panhandling. This article frames
both sides of the question as some claim that encouraging panhandling will only increase homelessness.
Herald Sun 13 [Editorial Staff, Decriminalizing panhandling Jun. 24, 2013
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/editorials/x1568238352/Decriminalizing-panhandling]
The panhandling issue, especially, has proven thorny. Many people have been troubled by the sight of down-and-out folks
approaching stopped or slowing cars, hand-lettered signs often in hand, and seeking a hand-out. They see danger to solicitors and
solicited alike. Others rightly point out that enabling a panhandlers survival technique may in fact inhibit
him or her from seeking more substantive long-term help and getting off the streets altogether . Now, after
several months and some arrests for intersection panhandling, and vehement objections from some homeless-advocacy
groups, yet another compromise may be in the works. The Homeless Services Advisory Committee is poised
to recommend changes that would roll back the most restrictive parts of the ordinance. A study group of that committee is prepared to urge
the full committee that panhandling be allowed and it be decriminalized in Durham , study group chair John Bowman
told The Herald-Suns Ray Gronberg last week. The study group, and the committee, are likely to suggest an outreach
court similar to one in Orange County that would help homeless people accused of minor offenses get
social services rather than fines or jail time. Weve advocated that change before, and are encouraged it
may be near. Its not yet clear how extensive the committees recommendations will be or how the will
be fielded by the City Council. But on decriminalization, at least, one council member who supported the ban has been publicly
supportive.

Needs Exploration

Abortion
I did not cut a lot of cards on this. I was not involved with college debate on the courts topic. I thought
someone would provide me with some assistance after Kuswa posted about it on CEDA forums. Alas, no.
I have not done enough work to suggest the inclusion of abortion laws into the topic. But, if someone
wanted to write an area paper before the topic committee meeting, it would be a useful place to examine.
For example:
One or more of the following ought not be a federal, state, or local crime:
Termination of a pregnancy without parental consent, mandatory waiting periods prior to, or mandatory
ultrasound and-or counseling.
My initial reaction is that inclusion of the area would expand the topic too broadly. But, if someone
wanted to narrow it down, it would be worth exploring.

Drinking Age
Wording may look something like this:
One or more of the following ought not be a federal, State, or local crime:
The consumption of alcohol for those 18 to 20 years of age.
The Minimum Legal Drinking Age is something that in at least some fashion tends to intersect with
student experience on a college campus. Debates in this area stand to not solely be experiential but
could also draw upon literature discussing one of the deepest and most examined methodological
questions in public policy circles:

WAGENAAR & TOOMEY 02 [ALEXANDER C. WAGENAAR, Ph.D.,and TRACI L.

TOOMEY, Ph.D. Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota
JOURNAL OF STUDIES ON ALCOHOL, SUPPLEMENT NO. 14, 2002 reposted at the website
College Drinking Changing the Culture. Last reviewed 9/23/2005
http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/supportingresearch/journal/wagenaar.aspx]
THE MINIMUM legal drinking age (MLDA) is the most well-studied alcohol control policy in the United
States (Wagenaar and Toomey, 2000). The intention of this policy is to lower alcohol use and its associated
problems among youth. Following Prohibition, most states established an age-21 MLDA. During the early 1970s, a trend
toward lowering the MLDA to age 18, 19 or 20 began in the United States, providing many natural
experiments. As a result of research evidence indicating that traffic crashes among youth increased
following lowering of the legal age, a citizens' effort began urging states to raise the MLDA back to age
21. In 1984, the federal government enacted the Uniform Drinking Age Act, which provided for the
withholding of federal highway funds from states that failed to increase their MLDA (King and Dudar, 1987).
By 1988, all states had established an age-21 MLDA. The increase in MLDA across multiple states again
provided researchers with many natural experiments to assess effects of these policy changes on alcohol
consumption and related problems among youth. Despite this long history, the debate over the MLDA continues.
Part of this debate is whether the age-21 MLDA is really effective in reducing alcohol-related problems.
This debate is particularly relevant to college campuses because the majority of students on many
campuses are under age 21. Some college administrators argue that the age-21 law has caused more
problems on college campuses, not less (Lonnstrom, 1985).
Should the Topic Committee opt to include this area, undergraduate students could study literature
accessing:
-Forbidden Fruit theory
-Binge drinking
-Safe driving practices
-A host of questions related to methodology. For example:
-does MLDA-21 (minimum legal drinking age of 21) discourage 18-20 year olds from seeking
medical assistance for fear of legal consequences ?
-Can we safely extrapolate data from Europe (where MLDA is lower) ?
-Does data about driving fatalities control for inexperienced driving ?

The recent push in favor of decriminalizing marijuana laws has drawn-in the libertarian crowd and
sparked a renewed debate about the drinking age. Here, the Affirmative could push back the federal
National Minimum Drinking Age Act, discuss alcohol as a gateway, and access a host of issues
associated where and how socializes:

Paglia 14 [Camille Paglia Professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Paglia
was named as one of the top 100 public intellectuals by the journals Foreign Policy and Prospect. The
Drinking Age Is Past Its Prime Time April 23, 2014 http://time.com/72546/drinking-age-alcoholrepeal/]
The
National Minimum Drinking Age Act, passed by Congress 30 years ago this July, is a gross violation of civil
liberties and must be repealed. It is absurd and unjust that young Americans can vote, marry, enter contracts and
serve in the military at 18 but cannot buy an alcoholic drink in a bar or restaurant. The age-21 rule sets the U.S. apart from
The age-21 rule sets the U.S. apart from all advanced Western nations, and it has pushed kids toward pills and other antisocial behavior

all advanced Western nations and lumps it with small or repressive countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, Qatar, Oman and the United
Arab Emirates. Congress was stampeded into this puritanical law by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, who with all good intentions were wrongly
intruding into an area of personal choice exactly as did the hymn-singing 19th century temperance crusaders, typified by Carrie Nation smashing
beer barrels with her hatchet. Temperance fanaticism eventually triumphed and gave us 14 years of Prohibition. That in turn spawned the crime
syndicates for booze smuggling, laying the groundwork for todays global drug trade. Thanks a lot, Carrie! Now that marijuana

regulations have been liberalized in Colorado, its time to strike down this dictatorial national law. Government is
not our nanny. The decrease in drunk-driving deaths in recent decades is at least partly attributable to more uniform seat-belt use and a
strengthening of DWI penalties. Today, furthermore, there are many other causes of traffic accidents, such as the careless use of cell phones or
prescription drugs like Ambien implicated in the recent trial and acquittal of Kerry Kennedy for driving while impaired. Learning how

to drink responsibly is a basic lesson in growing up as it is in wine-drinking France or in Germany, with its family-oriented
beer gardens and festivals. Wine was built into my own Italian-American upbringing, where children were given sips of my grandfathers
homemade wine. This civilized practice descends from antiquity. Beer was a nourishing food in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and wine was identified
with the life force in Greece and Rome: In vino veritas (In wine, truth). Wine as a sacred symbol of unity and regeneration remains in the
Christian Communion service. Virginia Woolf wrote that wine with a fine meal lights a subtle and subterranean glow, which is the rich yellow
flame of rational intercourse. What this cruel 1984 law did is deprive young people of safe spaces where they

could happily drink cheap beer, socialize, chat and flirt in a free but controlled public environment. Hence
in the 1980s we immediately got the scourge of crude binge drinking at campus fraternity keg parties, cut
off from the adult world. Women in that boorish free-for-all were suddenly fighting off date rape. Club drugs ecstasy,
methamphetamine, ketamine (a veterinary tranquilizer) surged at raves for teenagers and on the gay male circuit scene. Alcohol relaxes,
facilitates interaction, inspires ideas and promotes humor and hilarity. Used in moderation, it is quickly flushed from
the system, with excess punished by a hangover. But deadening pills, such as todays massively overprescribed antidepressants, linger in body
and brain and may have unrecognized long-term side effects. Those toxic chemicals, often manufactured by shadowy firms abroad, have been
worrisomely present in a recent uptick of unexplained suicides and massacres. Half of the urban professional class in the U.S. seems doped on
meds these days. As a libertarian, I support the decriminalization of marijuana , but there are many problems

with pot. From my observation, pot may be great for jazz musicians and Beat poets, but it saps energy and willpower and can produce
physiological feminization in men. Also, it is difficult to measure the potency of plant-derived substances like pot. With
brand-name beer or liquor, however, purchased doses have exactly the same strength and purity from one
continent to another, with no fear of contamination by dangerous street additives like PCP.
Some areas of the country have moved away from criminalizing underage alcohol-related offenses
opting instead for civil infractions:
Hanson 04 [last footnote, Sept 25th, 2004 David J. Hanson, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Sociology of
the State University of New York at Potsdam. Alcohol: Problems and Solutions a website maintained by
Hanson and the State University of New York at Potsdam DC Decriminalizes Underage Drinking
http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/InTheNews/UnderageDrinking/1098902494.html#.U11AH1dWiOg]
The District of Columbia has decriminalized underage drinking, making consumption of alcohol by those
under age 21 a civil rather than criminal offense. Punishment can includes community service or alcohol
education classes, a fine of $300 and suspension of a drivers license for 90 days. Offenders will no longer be

arrested and carry a criminal record for the rest of their lives. There is no reason to criminalize --arrest -- a
young adult holding a can of beer in his backyard, said City Council member Paul Mendelson. If hes underage, he can be fined
and lose his drivers license. But dont label it a criminal misdemeanor . The Council agreed 11-1, with one Council member
absent. New legislation was passed because, although underage drinking had been decriminalized in 1997, police had continued to arrest young
people for what was no longer a crime. A class action suit led to an injunction against additional illegal arrests.

Neighboring Maryland has also decriminalized possession and consumption of alcohol by those under the
age of 21.
MLDA debates are bi-directional and deep. This Pro-Con website is designed to sketch the bare-bones of
both sides of arguments. That said, it could help give the Debate Community a feel for where MLDA
debates might go. Notice that for each bullet point the website lists a series of footnotes supporting claims
in greater detail:

ProCon.org 14 [Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered from 21 to a Younger Age? Last updated on
4/17/2014 http://drinkingage.procon.org/]

PRO Lowering Drinking Age

18 is the age of adulthood in the United States, and adults should have the right to make their own decisions
about alcohol consumption. Turning 18 entails receiving the rights and responsibilities of adulthood to vote, smoke cigarettes, serve on
juries, get married, sign contracts, be prosecuted as adults, and join the military - which includes risking one's life. [5] [6]

Allowing 18- to 20-year-olds to drink alcohol in regulated environments with supervision would decrease
unsafe drinking activity. Prohibiting this age group from drinking in bars, restaurants, and other licensed locations causes them to drink
in unsupervised places such as fraternity houses or house parties where they may be more prone to binge drinking and other unsafe behavior. [7]
Traffic accidents and fatalities are most common among newly-legal drinkers, regardless of the MLDA. [8] In 2009, the 21- to 24-year-old age
group had the highest percentage of drivers in fatal crashes with blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) levels of .08 or higher 35 percent. [9] Any
increase in traffic accidents or fatalities in 18- to 20-year-olds would be offset by a decrease for those 21 and older. [10]
There are fewer drunk driving traffic accidents and fatalities in many countries with MLDA of 18. Although
the United States increased the MLDA to 21 in 1984, its rate of traffic accidents and fatalities in the 1980s decreased less than that of European
countries whose legal drinking ages are lower than 21. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
The decrease in drunk driving fatalities as a percentage of total traffic fatalities in the United States does not correlate to the MLDA. [13] Since
1982, two years prior to the Uniform Drinking Age Act establishing an MLDA of 21, a decline of drunk driving fatalities occurred across all age
groups and demographic categories, and therefore cannot be reliably attributed to MLDA 21.
Lowering MLDA from 21 to 18 would diminish the thrill of breaking the law to get a drink. Normalizing
alcohol consumption as something done responsibly in moderation will make drinking alcohol less of a taboo for young adults entering college
and the workforce. [14] [15]
MLDA 21 is largely ineffective because the majority of teens continue to consume alcohol . According to the
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, underage drinking accounts for 17.5% ($22.5 billion) of consumer spending for alcohol in
the United States. [16] In 2006, 72.2% of twelfth graders reported drinking alcohol at some point in their lives. [14]
High non-compliance with MLDA 21 promotes general disrespect and non-compliance with other areas of

US law. MLDA 21 encourages young adults to acquire and use false identification documents to procure
alcohol. In this era of national security concerns, including terrorism, illegal immigration, and other threats, it would be
better to have fewer fake IDs in circulation and more respect for the law. [17]
MLDA 21 enforcement is not a priority for many law enforcement agencies. Police are inclined to ignore or under-enforce MLDA 21 because of
resource limitations, statutory obstacles, perceptions that punishments are inadequate, and the time and effort required for processing and
paperwork. An estimated two of every 1,000 occasions of illegal drinking by youth under 21 results in an arrest. [18]
MLDA 21 is not statistically associated with lower rates of suicide, homicide, or vandalism. In a 2002 meta-study of the legal drinking age and
health and social problems, 72% of the studies found no statistically significant relationship despite claims that lowering the MLDA to 18 would
increase suicide and criminal activities by adolescents. [19]
Drinking alcohol is an enjoyable activity. 18- to 20-year-old adults should not be denied that enjoyment when other pleasurable activities are legal
at age 18.

Lowering MLDA 21 would reduce the number of underage people who are hurt from alcohol-related
injuries or accidents due to fear of legal consequences if they sought medical attention. [7]
State governments should have the right to establish a lower legal drinking age that reflects their unique demographics, legal context, and history.
The Uniform Drinking Act, which compelled states to set the legal drinking age at 21 by withholding ten percent of highway funding from states
that kept the minimum legal drinking age at 18, is an example of federal government overreach into state affairs. Many states that were happy
with their MLDA 18 bowed to federal pressure rather than lose millions in annual highway funds. [15]
Lowering MLDA 21 would be good for the economy. More people would legally be able to drink in bars, restaurants, and other licensed
establishments. Revenue would increase for private business owners, and greater amounts of tax revenue would be collected by the government.

CON Lowering Drinking Age

Lowering MLDA 21 would be medically irresponsible. Alcohol consumption can interfere with development of the young
adult brain's frontal lobes, essential for functions such as emotional regulation, planning, and organization. When alcohol consumption interferes
with this early adult brain development, the potential for chronic problems such as greater vulnerability to addiction, dangerous risk-taking
behavior, reduced decision-making ability, memory loss, depression, violence, and suicide is greater. [20] [21] [22] [23]
Lowering MLDA 21 to 18 will irresponsibly allow a greater segment of the population to drink alcohol in

bars and nightclubs, which are not safe environments. 76% of bars have sold alcohol to obviously intoxicated patrons [43],
and about half of drivers arrested for driving while intoxicated (DWI) or killed as alcohol-involved drivers in traffic crashes did their drinking at
licensed establishments [44] [45] [46]. Neighborhoods with higher densities of bars, nightclubs, and other alcohol-selling locations suffer more
frequent assaults and other violent crimes. [24] [25]
The right to drink should have a higher age of initiation because of the dangers posed by drinking. Many rights in the United States are conferred
on citizens at age 21 or older. A person cannot legally purchase a handgun, gamble in a casino (in most states), or adopt a child until age 21, rent a
car (for most companies) at age 25, or run for President until age 35. Drinking should be similarly restricted due to the responsibility required to
self and others. [24]
MLDA 21 reduces traffic accidents and fatalities . 100 of the 102 analyses (98%) in a 2002 meta-study of the legal drinking age
and traffic accidents found higher legal drinking ages associated with lower rates of traffic accidents. [19] The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA) estimated that MLDA 21 decreased the number of fatal traffic accidents for 18- to 20-year-olds by 13% and saved
approximately 27,052 lives from 1975-2008. [26]
MLDA 21 reduces alcohol consumption. In a 2002 meta-study, 87% of the analyses found higher legal drinking ages associated with lower
alcohol consumption. [19] In 2009, the NHTSA found that the percentage of weekend nighttime drivers with a blood-alcohol concentration
(BAC) of .08 or higher declined from 5.4% in 1986 (two years after the MLDA was raised to 21) to 2.2% in 2007. [27]

MLDA 21 should not be lowered to mirror European drinking age limits because the rate of drinking
among US teenagers is lower than most European countries . US teenagers also show equal or lower rates of
intoxication/binge drinking than do adolescents from most European countries, and most European countries report higher rates of intoxication
and binge drinking for youth under 13. [28]
MLDA 21 laws reduce the number of underage drinkers. The percentage of underage drinkers has decreased since 1984 when most MLDA 21
laws came into effect. [24] Studies indicate that when the drinking age is 21, those younger than 21 drink less and continue to drink less through
their early 20s, and that youth who do not drink until they are 21 tend to drink less as adults. [42]
MLDA 18 is not a right. A US district court ruled on Dec. 22, 1978 that MLDA 21 is "reasonably related to a state objective of reducing highway
crashes," and that MLDA 21 withstands a constitutional challenge on three key legal issues: (1) drinking alcohol is not a "fundamental" right
guaranteed by the Constitution, (2) age is not inherently a "suspect" criteria for discrimination (in contrast to race or ethnicity, for example) and
(3) using the drinking age to prevent highway crashes has a "rational basis" in available scientific evidence. [29]
The American public overwhelmingly supports MLDA 21. A 2007 Gallup poll found that 77% of Americans would oppose
a federal law that lowers the drinking age in all states to age 18. [33] Numerous state and national surveys dating from the 1970s (when states
were raising the legal drinking age) through the present have shown overwhelming public support for MLDA 21. [30] [31] [32]
Lowering MLDA 21 would give high schoolers and even middle schoolers easier access to alcohol . Newlylegal drinkers often purchase alcohol for their underage peers, creating a "trickle-down" effect. [34] Surveys show that the most common source
of alcohol among 18- to 20-year olds is their 21- to 24-year-old peers. [35]
MLDA 21 helps prevent underage binge drinking. Binge drinking peaks among 21- to 25-year-olds at 45.9%, while the binge
drinking rates of those aged 12-13, 14-15, 16-17, and 18-20 are 1.5%, 7.8%, 19.4%, and 35.7% respectively. [23] [36]
MLDA 21 exerts valuable social pressure on potential underage drinkers and those who may serve them. Youth may choose not to drink, or to
drink less often, because of decreased social acceptability or increased risks from parental or legal authorities. Older youth and adults may furnish
alcoholic beverages to minors less frequently, and licensed alcohol outlets may sell to minors less frequently, because of their perceptions that it is
illegal, morally wrong, or because they might be caught. [18]
The MLDA should stay at 21 because people tend to be more mature and responsible at 21 than 18. 18-year-olds are typically entering a new
phase of independence from their parents through college or the workforce, and are more susceptible to binge drinking, risky sexual activity, and
other irresponsible behavior due to lack of maturity.
Lowering the drinking age will invite more use of illicit drugs among 18-21 year olds. A peer-reviewed study from the Journal of

Studies of Alcohol and Drugs found that the younger a person begins to drink alcohol the more likely it is
that they will use other illicit drugs. [38] Lowering MLDA 21 would increase the number of teens who drink and therefore the
number of teens who use other drugs. [37] [39]

Drug Use in Sports

The federal laws that prohibit the use and sell of steroids have been applied specifically to sports. It
would certainly be fun to debate about the sports world.
Here is a solvency advocate for the legalization of steroids

BURGE 94 associate at Bodkin, McCarthy, Sargent & Smith in Los Angeles,

California. J.D., (1994) Loyola Law School [Burge, John. "Legalize and Regulate: A
Prescription for Reforming Anabolic Steroid Legislation." Loy. LA Ent. LJ 15 (1994): 33.]
Even prior to the federal scheduling of steroids, steroid distributors were being pursued by the
government; over 300 joint federal/state investigations had occurred,"4 resulting in at least 175 steroid trafficking
convictions. 5 Despite vigorous enforcement, however, steroid legislation has had no discernable effect on the rate of use. In fact, national
surveys indicate that steroid use is increasing.16 This Article takes the position that the current approach to the

problem of steroid abuse, criminalization , has worsened a serious health problem. So far, governmental
efforts have (1) greatly reduced the supply of FDA regulated product; (2) created a market for
unregulated, imported or clandestinely manufactured product; and (3) reduced the likelihood that the
average steroid user will seek or be able to obtain medical supervision . Athletes and increasing numbers
of young adults are self-injecting large amounts of a powerful drug about which medical experts know
little. This Article proposes a different approach to the problem. This Article argues that (1) steroid use cannot be equated
with the use of narcotics like heroin and cocaine; (2) the powerful social pressures that result in steroid
use have been underestimated; (3) the threat of criminal penalties cannot overcome these pressures; and (4)
only fundamental changes in societal values can affect the demand for steroids . Because the demand for steroids is
so powerful, steroid use should be legalized and regulated to best mitigate adverse health effects. Finally,
this Article advocates a program that would.require users to obtain steroids from licensed physicians pursuant to a prescription, and require
physicians to both provide medical monitoring during the course of their use and regularly inform users of the health risks and the health
impacts of their use.

The aff and neg ground would be similar to the other drug areas but would allow the affirmative to talk
about steroid use as it pertains to the sports world. The negative ground would be similar.

Citations
Collins, Rick. "Changing the Game: The Congressional Response to Sports Doping via the Anabolic
Steroid Control Act." New Eng. L. Rev. 40 (2005): 753.
Collins, Rick. "FROM GRAND SLAMS TO GRAND JURIES: PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING
DRUG USE IN SPORTS: SYMPOSIUM CONTRIBUTION: Changing the Game: The Congressional
Response to Sports Doping via the Anabolic Steroid Control Act." New Eng. L. Rev. 40 (2006): 7531103.
Collins, Rick. Legal muscle: anabolics in America. Legal Muscle Pub Inc, 2002.
Heisler, Sarah R. "Steroid Regulation in Professional Sports: Sarbanes-Oxley as a Guide." Cardozo Arts
& Ent. LJ 27 (2009): 199.

Iliakostas, Anthony F. "Separation of Sport and State: The Federal Governments Involvement in Major
League Baseballs Drug Testing Program." Pace IP, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum. Vol. 3. No. 1.
2013.
Miller, Joel. Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America. Thomas Nelson Inc, 2004.
Mitten, Matthew J. "Drug Testing of Athletes-An Internal, Not External, Matter." New Eng. L. Rev. 40
(2005): 797.
Mrkonjic, Michal, and Arnout Geeraert. "Sports organisations, autonomy and good governance." Action
for Good Governance in International Sports Organisations (2013).

Final Stuff

Proposal for the Topic

While the topic paper is a suggestion for the area, I wanted to be explicit in case anyone wanted to know
what my personal expectation for the topic would be. While there are plenty of options listed below, they
should provide general possibilities and guidance for the topic committee.
First, the topic committee should put together a slate of areas for debate and available for a vote. They
should do their best to make the area options broad as the community vote tends to pick the smallest
possible option.
Second, the topic committee should either make a decision about or provide a vote between decriminalize
and legalize with an appropriate adverb phrase for each.
Below are the traditional and passive voice options I considered while researching and think would make
for fine debates:
1. The United States federal government should legalize nearly all activities in one or more of the
following:
2. The United States federal government should decriminalize nearly all activities in one or more of the
following areas:
3. The United States should fully legalize one or more of the following:

Passive Voice Options:

1. Laws prohibiting one or more of the following ought be decriminalized:
2. Laws in the U.S. providing criminal penalties for one or more of the following activities should be
abolished/repealed:

Including more than the Federal Laws:

One or more of the following ought not be a federal, state, or local crime in the United States:
OR
The United States should legalize one or more of the following:

RJ Giglios Thoughts
I had a hard time finding people who had the resources to contribute to the topic paper. I did receive a
good bit of positive feedback. RJ told me I could share our lengthy chat about the topic, so I thought I
would put it here at the bottom of the topic paper. Several of the Emory Debaters I shared this section
with enjoyed the reading, so I thought you might as well.
Thanks for letting me exploit your chats, RJ:
RJ: I'd say my biggest concern
is that the vast majority of criminal law is state
this is a problem for usfg as an actor, but not for the passive voice phrasing
JH: yeah, all of the things i have listed there are federal crimes against, as least as far as I could find
RJ: Yeah
though
even if you repeal the federal laws that criminalize marijuana, prostitution etc.
the "state laws pre-empt" means its still illegal is interesting
there would still be state laws against those things
The federal government can pretty much prosecute you for almost ANYTHING the state prosecutes you
for
They simply don't as a matter of resource conservation (they presume states will prosecute you for simple
marijuana possession, prostitution etc.)
JH: can't federal law pre-empt state laws for the legalization of things - see segregation, etc
RJ: Well, with segregation the court found that state action of segregation was ILLEGAL
because it violated the 14th amendment
segregation didn't actually involve legalizing anything that I can think of
So you're asking
if the federal government could pass a law
legalizing something in such a way
as to overwhelm state laws prohibiting it?
If the aff found something like a constitutional right to physician assisted suicide, that would render it
unconstitutional for states to prohibit it

JH: well, i think they can yeah, i wonder if that's better

thanks for your time. gotta run
No problem - I'll keep dumping thoughts
So, best method that I can think of for an aff to have the federal government legalize something is by
having the Supreme Court rule that there is a fundamental right to X (prostitution, physician assisted
suicide, human organ sale [I could see this being intuited under some sort of sovereign right to the body
rationale]). They would argue that you can locate the right in the first ten amendments, or the right must
be so inherent to the basic idea of liberty that the government has to recognize it. or they could trace the
right back through other common law rights (right to procreate, right to use contraceptives, right to sex
with whoever you want however you want [sodomy]).
Then, if the Supreme Court recognizes a right, what they're saying is that the 14th amendments promise
of due process contains a substantive portion. IE the government cannot, by ANY process, deprive you of
something (a given right).
14th amendment also explicitly applies to the states, so it would automatically bar states from prohibting
such a thing
hence, it is unconstitutional for either the state or federal government to prohibit sodomy, or prohibit
contraceptive use between consenting adults
and you're right that the reason this is the case is because of federal law (the constitution) preempting
state law
You could also argue that entering into a treaty which forces us to promise that we will guarantee a
specific right would enable the USfg to preempt any state law barring something
But I can't think of a good example of congress just unilaterally passing a piece of legislation that
preempts state law such that it would mandate something be legalized
I think if congress passed a law that was like "marijuana is legal, and this law preempts any state law to
the contrary" (it would probably be best to include the express preemption mandate in the text of the law,
lest courts be able to interpret the law such that there was no intention to preempt state law, which they
would probably do. I think the presumption is AGAINST preemption without express congressional
intent)
I think that would be struck down on federalism grounds
I COULD see the aff
having the federal government legalize marijuana
then read solvency evidence that states will follow suit
for example
The list of illegal substances that states use

is normally just copied word-for-word from the federal scheduling of drugs

Yeah, I'm trying to think about it and I can't think of an example where a person could be accused of a
crime in state court and invoke a federal law, argue the federal law preempts state law, then get the law
struck down on preemptions grounds... the vast vast majority of claims would be on constitutional
grounds
I'll ask my federal criminal law teacher about it
I do think Gorman has a good point that, as a practical matter, aff should be able to retain criminalization
for minors
His question about retaining an aff ability to enact a regulatory mechanism is interesting... I think that
shoudl be CP ground
however, my only concern with that as a CP is that I can't think of a lot of offense the aff could have
against that CP... just "regulatory mechanisms don't work that well" kind of arguments
maybe a solvency deficit
less risk of modeling by states
in terms of legalization, I like the idea of forcing the aff to defend total legalization
I DO think the aff could have offense against a CP that just decriminalizes
by arguing that retaining civil penalties prevents modeling/total cultural shift or something
And it prevents private markets from emerging, which could be good
Also, now that I'm thinking about it, aff could have offense against the regulatory mechanism CP in the
form of "Free market good -- will resolve all problems CP is concerned with and regulation prevents that
from happening"
Or, if it's a K aff, they could be like you still judge them/still makes it "illegal" in some sense
So, my ultimate ideas are that the aff would have to be a LITTLE clever under this topic
they could: a) have congress repeal laws outlawing marijuana/prostition etc. and just read "states will
model" evidence; b) have the supreme court find a fundamental right in one of teh things, thus autostriking down any federal or state laws that bar the thing
if the actor is not usfg, IE the passive voice phrasing, I actually think that would be pretty cool
Because I think it would allow the aff to argue they use states or federal government, or both in
cooperation, to legalize something
I think you could have your K aff or whatever, but I do think the neg could just go for an FX T argument
(non-state actors have to demonstrate solvency in order to prove they're T which is bad for neg ground for
X, Y and Z reason)

and I think the anarchy aff is extra T

I see some reallllly cool debates coming out of this, though
JH: this was a great exchange. I may just copy paste it into the topic paper, if that's okay with you.
So, feel free to edit a little if you want
RJ: nah you can take it as is. glad you like it