Ironically the only complaint about adoption of actual measurable standards I've heard is the claim that they were vague: what kind of standards? Actually reformers have come up with 4 criteria and have already analyzed 6 drugs [alcohol,marijuana, cigarettes,cocaine, heroin and coffee] based on 4 criteria using the twisted statistics of our own pro crime government. I have added a 5^th criterion: 3 major plus 2 secondary.

1] Likelihood of abuse leading to critical care. Abuse necessarily includes accidental overdoses including the thousands affected by acetaminophen overdoses. It would also include DUI casualties. One would think that banned drugs – catered to hard core abusers [high potency] and quicker delivery systems would be far more dangerous, but statistics suggest otherwise.

2] Likelihood of chronic use leading to long-term health problems. The clear leaders were alcohol and cigarettes although if other drugs were legal longer chronic use would close the gap for currently banned drugs.

3] Likelihood that use or abuse leads to criminal behavior. This was NOT one of the original criteria – although pro crime advocates make the absurd claim that 80% of crime comes from use of banned drugs. While this could be inferred, but once we take out crime CAUSED by our pro-crime drug policy and exclude all crimes involving sales and possession, gang warfare over territory, and only include those users with affordable supplies of banned drugs crime related strictly to use is minuscule: less than a twentieth of what alcohol users commit. This would also include impaired driving crimes.

If drug use has a minuscule relationship with critical and long term health problems or crime then the addictive qualities should be irrelevant. Who cares if over two thirds of our adult population is addicted to caffeine!

4] Likelihood of addiction. Cigarettes are the current gold standard – and available without restriction after age 18.

5] Severity of addiction. Cigarettes lead and very few street drugs beat alcohol – but legal availability and a lack of forced treatment would create more long term [mostly harmless] addicts of currently illegal drugs. We already enforce treatment for chronic alcoholics who break the law.

Nearly all the problems related to drugs are due to chronic use and abuse – and most of that is deliberately promoted to increase drug sales. Adoption of actual measurable standards would provide an incentive for drug sellers to behave more sensibly and start educating users about over reliance on their product and the proper use of drugs: as a short term solution to temporary problems – that should not be extended through drug use. We certainly don't get any drug education in our public school system about real drug-related problems!