While on stage at Clive Davis‘s annual pre-Grammys party earlier this month, award-winning singer Tony Bennett noted that legalizing drugs would reduce the desire to use drugs.

Bennett has had his fair share of drug-related experiences. He struggled with a cocaine habit in the Seventies, and like the rest of us, has watched extremely talented people like Amy Winehouse (whose last known recording was with Bennett) and Whitney Houston (for whom the pre-Grammys show became a memorial) crumble under addiction.

Later, while backstage at the Grammys, Bennett told Rolling Stone he sticks by his comment, stating drug legalization would:

[...] get rid of all the gangsters that make people hide. One thing I’ve learned about young people, when you say ‘Don’t do this,’ that’s the one thing they’re going to try and do. Once it’s legal and everybody can do it, there is no longer the desire to do something that nobody else can do.

Of course, Bennett’s idea isn’t new, by any means. Lots of people – yes, even those who don’t use drugs – feel drug legalization in America is the way to go.

I think his reasoning is interesting, though. While I know several people who think drugs should be legalized, most of them feel that way because they think it would cut down on the country’s crime rates; not too many people have told me they believe in drug legalization would take away the temptation to do drugs, and, by that way of thinking, cut down on addiction rates.

What do YOU think, readers?

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    Last reviewed: 22 Feb 2012