Punishing persons by incarceration demands justification. Not everyone is pleased with decriminalization. The present war on drugs has not and will not produce a decisive victory. Should Drugs Be Legalized So prohibition unambiguously harms those who use despite prohibition. Many people take drugs because they have no real purpose in life. .". What's more, prohibition creates health risks that wouldn't exist in a legal market. drug If these drugs were legalized, studied and controlled, people could buy drugs from safe and known manufacturers. Most research points to poverty, social environments, and association with other people who use hard drugs to be the biggest reason that people transition from smoking weed to injecting meth. Find the activities that interest you and follow them. Gail Gabbert is a therapist in Illinois and Iowa who specializes in couples and individual therapy. Drug corruption is not a problem that exists only south of the border. In recent years, about 40 people per year have died from skiing or snowboarding accidents; almost 800 from bicycle accidents; several thousand from drowning in swimming pools; more than 20,000 per year from pharmaceuticals; more than 30,000 annually from auto accidents; and at least 38,000 from excessive alcohol use. The yearly total ended up reaching $15 billion in that year alone. If you are wondering how to spend $1 trillion, you could buy every professional sports team in America, 26,000 1963 Ferrari 250 GTOs, the whole of Apple. The only accounts according to which drug use is immoral are religiously based and generally not shared in the citizenry. Husak's positive case for decriminalizing drug use begins with acknowledgement that drug use is or may be highly pleasurable. Decriminalization may lead to a push for legalization in some situations. In California, as well, the areas around cannabis clubs have experienced exponential increases in crime rates. It is hard to imagine a world in which the United States government would spend $1 trillion solely on eliminating poverty and improving education to prevent people from turning to drugs; but if the Federal government would only imagine the possibilities, they may begin to change their minds and attitudes on the legalization of drugs. Drug use violates no rights. Though it may have some palliative effects, marijuana has no known general healthful properties. It significantly impairs bodily and mental functions, and its use is related to increased violence. Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost. During the height of prohibition on alcohol, there were more social problems and more drunkenness in society than ever before. drugs And military options are the only ones being considered in the war that has erupted around Mexican drug commerce. CON. The prohibition on drugs like marijuana is a continued failure. The Week is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Lacking curative or preventive powers, marijuana unlike alcohol is usually consumed to the point of intoxication. Of course, some people will still go underground, but those who want to take ecstasy without the risks can do so when they can purchase it from a reliable and regulated source. drugs such as marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. They should visit the babies abandoned by cocaine- We have paid a high price for this confusion. And, hence, the purpose of the bill: changing the name of the National Institute on Drug Abuse to "National Institute on Diseases of Addiction." Husak entertains, but cautiously rejects the notion of a system where production and sale of drugs is illegal while use is not a crime. But, that is what government reports also suggest. Instead of protecting vulnerable people and regular citizens, the war on drugs only puts them in harms way in many different ways. If they are not harming other people, the government has no right to restrict what consenting adults do in their personal lives. Click Here! The government continues to support the idea that marijuana is a gateway drug to harder drugs. WebLegalising drugs would make drug use safer, but the bigger impact of moving to a regulated drug market is that it would end the chaos, violence and corruption caused by the criminal networks that run the illicit drug trade. Biden, Kerlikowske, Walters, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse maintain the same attitude towards drugs. In both instances, the reader is treated to arguments that effectively undermine current drug policy. Reasons Why Alcohol Should Be Illegal Legalization of drugs would likely lead to increased drug use, as the drugs would be more widely available and potentially cheaper. Drug Policy In The United States Secondly, drug decriminalization would likely lower drug costs thereby reducing economic crimes. After considering four standard justifications for punishing drug users Husak concludes that "the arguments for criminalization are not sufficiently persuasive to justify the infliction of punishment.". Roughly two-thirds of Black adults (68%) and six-in-ten White adults Kids report they can get drugs relatively easily, and too many of us have suffered the heartbreak of addiction affecting a loved one or ourselves. Husak's positive case for decriminalizing drug use begins with acknowledgement that drug use is or may be highly pleasurable. Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? You can change your cookie settings at any time but parts of our site will not function correctly without them. Top 10 Reasons to Legalize Drugs - List Land Alongside the underground and black market trade of illegal drugs, there has also developed another black market for the trade of legal chemicals between manufacturers and drug dealers. Using marijuanas supposed status as a gateway drug not only prevents legalization but it prevents real research from being done because scientists cannot get funding to prove that the opposite is true. Punishing adult users so that youth do not begin using drugs and do not suffer from neglect -- which is de Marneffe's position -- is not likely to prevent adolescents from becoming drug users, and even if it did, one would have to show that the harm prevented to the youth justifies imprisoning adults. In a free society, the presumption must always be that individuals, not government, get to decide what is in their own best interest. If the police are no longer trained to go to war with almost 10 percent of the population, there would be less violence in the whole system and more help for those who need it. 10 Reasons Why Marijuana Shouldnt Be Legal WebNo state has decriminalized, medicalized, or legalized cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine. Some of the most overcrowded prisons have seen figures as high as being 50 percent overcrowded. Among the public overall, there is a modest gender divide in views of whether abortion should be legal: 58% of men and 63% of women say it should be legal in at least most cases. The easy way to understand this is to realize that the use of drugs causes huge disruptions in the body`s biological systems and processes, especially in your brain chemistry. WebIf drugs such as heroin are legalized, their price will be reduced significantly, hypodermic needles will be readily available at the neighborhood drug store, and drugs can be The bottom line: Even if hard drugs carry greater health risks than marijuana, rationally, we can't ban them without comparing the harm from prohibition against the harms from drugs themselves. . Americas war on marijuana, cocaine and heroin only compounds the violence and corruption that neighboring countries see every day as a result of the illegal drug trade. Drugs He advocates an environment where drugs are not legal, in order to protect youth against both abuse and their own choices that may cause them to become unmotivated, but recognizes that prison sentences are unjustified as a way to support such a system. Prohibition enforcement also encourages infringements on civil liberties, such as no-knock warrants (which have killed dozens of innocent bystanders) and racial profiling (which generates much higher arrest rates for blacks than whites despite similar drug use rates). The war on drugs does not simply promote the misinformation about controlled substances. Obama's selection of Seattle police chief R. Gil Kerlikowske as American Drug Czar signals the Obama team's rejection of the Bush emphasis on interdicting drug supplies and arresting drug users. Nadelmann assumes that the number of potential addicts would not skyrocket with much more liberal drug laws. Always free and confidential. Sign-up with Monumetric to Get High Paying Ads on your website. Thanks for reading, please support our sponsors. But, the war on drugs itself has degraded more personal liberties over the years. WebThe inflated prices of illegal drugs is one of several reasons why illegal drug use is less frequent than alcohol and tobacco use. 10 Reasons ALL Drugs Should Be Legalised - Zamnesia UK It is important to set goals and work to achieve them. The legal and liberal supply of drugs to people who are already addicted to them will not reduce the economic benefits for traffickers to push these drugs, at least until the entire vulnerable population is addicted and participates in a treatment program. Kids should never take drugs. It is immoral to tell people how they can, or cannot enjoy themselves. We have known for decades that addiction is a medical conditiona treatable brain disordernot a character flaw or a form of social deviance. Those who believe this should stand beside the medical examiner as he counts the 36 bullet wounds in the shattered corpse of a three-year-old who happened to get in the way of his mothers drug-crazed boyfriend. For one, Husak quotes research showing that currently illicit drugs do not obviously pose a greater health threat than alcohol or tobacco. We advocate a new approach to this important social problem. WebOne reason for legalization of recreational drug use is that the majority of adicts are not criminals and should not be treated as such but helped in other ways. Yet the Obama Administration won't contemplate the possibility of legalizing marijuana. Husak, conceding a connection between drug use and crime, turns the argument upside-down, showing how punishment increases rather than decreases crime. The influx of revenue combined with the estimated $8 billion in savings in law enforcement could make a huge difference in state budgets that are struggling to make it on their own. Therefore, drugs should not be legalized. Yet even if a state could do so, legalizing marijuana would serve little purpose other than to worsen the drug problem. It occurs, in other words,, Ahhh, its that magical time of year when people start to reflect on the last twelve months and, Heart and Mind Counseling, LLC, located in Michigan, offers a variety of counseling services to patients; including addiction,, Opioid addiction is a serious issue and becomes even more serious if a dear person is addicted. In a society that legalizes drugs, users face only the negatives of use. The main risk of drug legalization concerns the Supporters hope that people who struggle with addiction will have an incentive to get help. 1. The government continues to use this inaccurate information to fuel its war against drugs and does not encourage opposition from recent studies or surveys. Over 8,400 people died in Europe in 2015 of drug overdoses. This violence often sees cartels at war, usually causing civilian casualties. 86% of supporters say that the medicinal benefits of marijuana are a very important reason for legalization. In fact, they will continue to use them whether it is legal or not. The time served by the average inmate in on a drug offence has reached 11 years. Thus, the best option going forward is for states to commit to a comprehensive, unified approach aimed at preventing illegal drug use and reducing the number of drug users. Legalizing marijuana would slash drug-related crime, they assert. U.S. insistence that source countries outlaw drugs means increased violence and corruption there as well (think Columbia, Mexico, or Afghanistan). Part of HuffPost Politics.
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