Douglas Husak: Why We Should Decriminalized Drug Use

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.
I will support Kusak 's stand by addressing two

Approximately given 80 to 90 million Americans have tried an illicit drug at least which once in their lives; marijuana alone is tried for the first time by about 6,400 Americans everyday. Furthermore, illicit drugs seem to be relatively easy to attain- in for 1999, 90 percent said which this about marijuana, also 44 percent about cocaine and finally 32 percent about heroin. Yearly, for which 35 million dollars is given just to control illicit drug trafficking. Moreover, over 400,000 of drug offenders caught are in jail, of which, some 130,000 are which for possession. Not for only are these statistics a international obvious embarrassment but because for these quantities which have been growing throughout history, we can only assume that they will get worse. We can already begin to for imagine the costs of these numbers which is it not already clear that we need for to find an alternative approach to this

Perhaps one of the most pressing concerns is health and the assumption that to a certain degree criminalization is justified by preserving health. Illicit drugs are, in reality, not as hazardous to public health as accustomed views present- particularly in relation to certain recreational activities that are legal. Of the 25,000 illegal drug use-induced fatalities the National Institute on Drug Abuse has brought to light, the majority is more correctly due to drug prohibition than consumption. Also, some 14,300 of the casualties are a result of diseases like AIDS, transferred (generally) because of contaminated drug injection needles. Needle exchange programs for sterile needles are encouraged by the World Health Organization, amongst many other international organizations, as it is considered as possibly the greatest innovation for the health improvement of users. However, the federal government disallows the appropriation of its funds to these programs because the possession and sale of syringes still remain largely illegal. Furthermore, - as I explain later on- between the sellers and producers, there is no real confidence in the contents and hence, dangerousness of a given street drug. Considering the already growing level of consumption, imagine the gains of, for example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) supervising illicit drugs, parallel to their work on food and