S. public has been asked to name the most important problem facing the nation, it is virtually unprecedented for any other social issue to appear at the top of the list."4 The legalization of narcotics is a raging issue among teenagers, parents, politicians, and economists. Some of these people feel that America should legalize narcotics and use the money that is spent on fighting the drug war on better political agendas such as education and health care reform. Some also feel that we have foughtthe drug war for many years, and we should stop, due the fact that drug usage has not had a significant decrease in the past 10 years. Narcotics should not be legalized due to the reasons that if narcotics were legalized, drug use would spread exponentially, which may lead to a substantial increase in drug abuse, crime, and many domestic problems.Economist Dr. Richard Gilbert, the president of the Canadian Urban Institute and has written extensively on both drug and urban issues in America. He believes drug business dealers cannot survive if dealers only sold to dealers, as well as dealers not being able to survive if they couldn"t sell to the majority of inner-city residents. Furthermore, he believes in order for a drug business to thrive, there must be a ready source of customers. If drugs were legalized and sold under heavy restrictions, which include a minimum age requirement, this would produce revenue for the government as well as put illegal wholesale dealers out of business due to the customers buying the narcotics from a different legal source. A survey of 8098 Americans taken by the National Comorbidity Survey showed that 51% of males and females from the ages of 15-54 have abused illegal drugs more than once in their lives. When they were asked the reason for repeating their drug abuse, over 80% of those surveyed said it was due to the availability of the drug. In other words those, 80% of the 8098 surveyed would not have been repeat offenders of illegal drug use.