by Bill McCollum

About the author: Bill McCollum is a Republican senator from Florida.

No discussion on the merits of drug legalization is legitimate unless it is prefaced by these alarming, undisputed facts:

•Teen drug use has doubled since 1992;
• Nearly half of all 17-year-olds say they could buy marijuana within an hour;
•The number of heroin-related emergency-room admissions jumped 58 percent between 1992 and 1995;
• And, most shockingly, illegal drugs and drug-related crime and violence kill 20,000 Americans a year, at a cost of $67 billion.

If thousands of young Americans were killed in Bosnia or in any other place across the globe, there would be riots in the streets.

And yet, even with these troubling statistics as a backdrop, a small, vocal minority are advocating drug legalization as...