Decriminalization Of Drugs Research Paper

1324 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Drug reform policy

Bretteville-Jensen, Anne Line. "To Legalize or Not To Legalize? Economic Approaches to the Decriminalization of Drugs." Substance Use & Misuse 41, no. 4 (2006): 555-65. Database online. Available from EbscoHost.
The journal article pursues an economic approach to explore the consequences, relying on “users’ price response and the validity of gateway theory.” Legalization possess two distinct interpretations: one for decriminalization of possession or consumption and the second, full decriminalization. Multiple factors and variables exist, nevertheless heavy drinkers’/smokers’ price responsiveness could predict the same for drug users. Opponents of cannabis legalization, claim the gateway to harder drugs initiates here. Nicotine, alcohol, ecstasy,
The information will assist in arguing the position I’ve undertaken.

D’Angelo, Ed. The Moral Culture of Drug Prohibition. Humanist. Sep/Oct 1994, 3-7. Database online. Available from EbscoHost.
The author expresses in the article, “that drug laws have been imposed to protect the moral culture of capitalism…” The illegality of drugs lies in their immorality not in their reality. The government cannot legalize drugs without surrendering the ability to control its Puritan agenda. The government demands freedoms remain forfeited to keep workers in engaged in the capitalist system. D’Angelo speculates, the “cultural turmoil of the 1960’s” prompted “Victorian renaissance” and “the rise of neo-conservatism.” The austerity of current legislation trusts “that the working class will always be enslaved by its desires” therefore sacrificing choices to those better suited to decide.
The article will lend itself to exploration of morality in the legalization debate. The majority of opponents to legalization, profess health issues and violence to drive the current
Schuster voices in the journal article, “problems posed by currently available substances will pale in significance to the chemicals…that will shortly be upon us.” Altering an individual’s perception, compounded with paranoia and aggression, profoundly changes the success of our relationships with the world. Advances in drug policy can safeguard society against future issues, but legalization holds no societal

Show More
Related

  • In Favor of a More Liberal Drug Policy

    830 Words  | 2 Pages

    Legalizing the use of soft drugs would help bolster the U.S. economy, partially because the government would have the ability to tax these drugs. This includes marijuana used for medicinal purposes, which, according to a 1995 article in The Journal of the American Medical Association, can “counteract the toxicity of chemotherapy, treat migraines, minimize pain, and treat moderate wasting syndrome in AIDS patients.” The economy would also benefit from the legalization of drugs because fewer drug offenders would crowd the prisons, and the government could spend the money they saved from this reduction in prison populations on other public expenses. With drug busts running at 750,000 cases a year nationwide, (mostly for marijuana,) prisons are bulging, and those imprisoned for drug-related crime account for only a fraction of America’s drug users. In Elliot Currie’s essay, “Toward a Policy on Drugs,”...

    Read More

  • Douglas Husak: Why We Should Decriminalized Drug Use

    2036 Words  | 5 Pages

    We live in a “recreational drug culture”, with the current criminalization of illicit drugs being driven by the common but not entirely universally accepted assumption that negative externalities will instead be placed in on society. Addressing the seemingly ever-infinite "war on drugs", in "Why We Should Decriminalize Drug Use", Douglas Husak argues in favour of the decriminalization of drugs in terms of not criminalizing the use of such recreational drugs. In this paper, I will dispute that Kusak 's argument succeeds because of the lack of justification for prohibition, and the counterproductiveness and how numerically evident the ineffectiveness of these contemporary punitive policies are.

    Read More

  • Douglas N. Husak's A Moral Right to Use Drugs

    1269 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Douglas N. Husak’s A Moral Right to Use Drugs he attempts to look at drug use from an impartial standpoint in order to determine what is the best legal status for currently illegal drugs. Husak first describes the current legal situation concerning drugs in America, citing figures that show how drug crimes now make up a large percentage of crimes in our country. Husak explains the disruption which this causes within the judicial system and it is made clear that he is not content with the current way drugs are treated. The figures that Husak offers up, such as the fact that up to one third of all felony charges involve drugs, are startling, but more evidence is needed than the fact that a law is frequently broken to justify it’s repeal.

    Read More

  • Politics of Prohibition: Helpful Or Harmful To American Society?

    1407 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the duration of this paper, I will discuss an issue that has been controversial for over a century; prohibition and how it has effected, currently effects, and will, most likey, continue to effect American society. The aspects that I choose to address from this issue are political, historical, they make you wonder, and they should effect anyone who reads this paper. For decades, the American government has had a restriction or ban on drugs and alcohol. Also for decades, these restrictions have been met with resistance from our society. In the early twentieth century, from 1920 through 1933, it was the prohibition of alcohol. A corrupt time, in which, so called, "criminals" and law makers both manufactured and sold bootlegged alcohol. There was high demand then and everyone was in it for the money, everyone. A time which proved to be a failed attempt by the government to take away what is now one of the United States' top commodities. During the 1970's President Richard Nixon started an ongoing "war on drugs" and every president since Nixon has continued this fight to, somehow, rid the entire country of illicit drugs. Today, a few states have taken a new approach to one of these drugs and eyebrows are being raised to the war on drugs all together. States, such as, California, Washington, and Calorado have loosened their tight grip on prohibiting marijuana and even have medical marijuana dispenseries. This idea has been proven to have boosted those economies, and it has allowed people with cancer to use a medication that actually gives them comfort. However, marijuana is still illegal. Why would we restrict the nation from something that beneficial...

    Read More

  • America's War on Drugs: Policy and Problems

    4902 Words  | 10 Pages

    America's War on Drugs: Policy and Problems. In this paper I will evaluate America's War on Drugs. More specifically, I will outline our nation's general drug history and look critically at how Congress has influenced our current ineffective drug policy. Through this analysis, I hope to show that drug prohibition policies in the United States, for the most part, have failed.

    Read More

  • I Support the Decriminalization of All Drugs

    1134 Words  | 3 Pages

    When societies finally become comfortable with reality, they begin to abandon the murderous laws that impede their growth. Currently, the social stigma and legislated morality regarding the use of illicit drugs yield perhaps the most destructive effects on American society. Drug laws have led to a removal of non-violent citizens from society- either directly by incarceration or indirectly by death - that is genocidal in quantity and essence.

    Read More

  • The War on Drugs: Failures of the Drug Law Part 1

    4153 Words  | 9 Pages

    “[The war on drugs] has created a multibillion-dollar black market, enriched organized crime groups and promoted the corruption of government officials throughout the world,” noted Eric Schlosser in his essay, “A People’s Democratic Platform”, which presents a case for decriminalizing controlled substances. Government policies regarding drugs are more focused towards illegalization rather than revitalization. Schlosser identifies a few of the crippling side effects of the current drug policy put in place by the Richard Nixon administration in the 1970s to prohibit drug use and the violence and destruction that ensue from it (Schlosser 3). Ironically, not only is drug use as prevalent as ever, drug-related crime has also become a staple of our society. In fact, the policy of the criminalization of drugs has fostered a steady increase in crime over the past several decades. This research will aim to critically analyze the impact of government statutes regarding drugs on the society as a whole.

    Read More

  • Decriminalization of Drugs

    1331 Words  | 3 Pages

    For many years, a real push has been looming on the idea of legalizing now illegal drugs. This has become a hot debate throughout nations all over the world, from all walks of life. The dispute over the idea of decriminalizing illegal drugs is and will continue on as an ongoing conflict. In 2001, Drug decriminalization in all drugs, including cocaine and heroin, became a nationwide law in Portugal (Greenwald). Ethan Nadelman, essayist of “Think again: Drugs,” states his side of the story on the continuing criminalization of hard drugs, in which he stand to oppose. Whether it is for the good of human rights or not, decriminalizing drugs may be a good head start for a new beginning.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Alcoholics Anonymous

    1641 Words  | 4 Pages

    A “drug-free society” has never existed, and probably will never exist, regardless of the many drug laws in place. Over the past 100 years, the government has made numerous efforts to control access to certain drugs that are too dangerous or too likely to produce dependence. Many refer to the development of drug laws as a “war on drugs,” because of the vast growth of expenditures and wide range of drugs now controlled. The concept of a “war on drugs” reflects the perspective that some drugs are evil and war must be conducted against the substances

    Read More

  • Legalizing Marijuana Will Decreased Crime

    1426 Words  | 3 Pages

    Bibliography 1)      Friedman, Milton. “Prohibition and Drugs.” Newsweek. 1972 2)     Potter, Beverly. The Healing Magic of Cannabis.

    Read More

  • hgfds

    685 Words  | 2 Pages

    With the opinion of the American people becoming more allowing of low-level drug use, and the successful monetary generation in states like Colorado, we are now seeing viable alternatives to spending billions of dollars in failed efforts to restrict drug use, unfair imprisonment of minorities, and a dependence of drug users on violent cartels. The opinions of society is ever-changing, and this will certainly have an effect on our drug laws an policies. It is apparent that the negative stigma surrounding recreational drug use -at least with marijuana- is slowly diminishing.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The Liberal And Liberal Views On The War On Drugs

    1016 Words  | 3 Pages

    The purpose of this essay is to interpret the views of conservatives Sasha Abramsky, writing in the liberal magazine, the Nation, uses California as an example in which getting rid of the harsh drug policies would be a huge benefit to the economy. In the article titled “The War Against the ‘War on Drugs,’” Abramsky finds a correlation between the drug policies and incarceration rates. Abramsky writes about how some of the state’s political figures are finding that the war on drugs is “responsible for the spike in prison populations over the past thirty years” and they agree that the California’s drug policies “are not financially viable and no longer command majority support among the voting public” (18).

    Read More

  • Drugs in American Society, by Erich Goode

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    Drug in the American Society is a book written by Eric Goode. This book, as the title indicates, is about drugs in the American Society. It is especially about the misuse of most drugs, licit or illicit, such us alcohol, marijuana and more. The author wrote this book to give an explanation of the use of different drugs. He wrote a first edition and decided to write this second edition due to critic and also as he mentioned in the preface “there are several reason for these changes. First, the reality of the drug scene has changed substantially in the past dozen or so years. Second much more information has been accumulated about drug use. And third, I’m not the same person I was in 1972.”(vii). The main idea of this book is to inform readers about drugs and their reality. In the book, Goode argued that the effect of a drug is dependent on the societal context in which it is taken. Thus, in one society a particular drug may be a depressant, and in another it may be a stimulant.

    Read More

  • Should Drugs Be Decriminalized?

    1650 Words  | 4 Pages

    Thies, C. F., & Register, C. (1993). Decriminalization of marijuana and demand for alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. The Social Sciences Journal, 30(4), 385-399.

    Read More

  • Anti-legalization of Drugs

    1059 Words  | 3 Pages

    65-92 Riga, Peter J. " Legalization Would Help Solve The Nation's Drug Problem. " Greenhaven Press. 52-54 Rosenthal, A.M. " The Case For Slavery." Kennedy, Kennedy, and Aaron 370-372 " Two Crucial Issues in the Argument for Drug Legalization."

    Read More

More about Decriminalization Of Drugs Research Paper

Open Document