Legalization of Drugs

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Recommended: Economic effects of legalization of marijuana

While growing up, everyone is told that drugs are bad. That’s why US government declared a war against drugs a long time ago, but still people are using recreational drugs like marijuana and ecstasy. The prohibition against drugs is not working for us. Though we are investing a lot of taxpayers’ money on the DEA, we failed to stop people from taking drugs. Instead more people are dying from overdose or too much use of these drugs. Many people like Russell Brand thinks that legalizing drugs might be able to solve the problem. Though legalizing drugs is working perfectly in Switzerland and Portugal, we should do a lot of research before making any decisions. If the government do decide to legalize drugs, it will have certain impacts on our economy, public health and crime rate.
Pro marijuana legalization protestors believe legalizing drugs will bring economic relief. The government can increase tax revenue by putting a sales tax on drugs. Studies show that, if marijuana was taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco, government could earn around six billion dollars annually. Government can use this money to fund important social objectives like healthcare and education. Also legalization of drugs can decrease government expenditures. The savings would involve reductions in police expenditures, in prosecutorial and judicial expenditures, and in jail and prison expenditures. According to the World Bank, at least three-fourths of expenditures on drugs in the US goes toward apprehending and punishing dealers and users. If we legalize drugs, government will be able to decrease spending on the law enforcement. So, legalization of drugs might boost our economy. But it is not so simple.
Gil Kerl...

... middle of paper ...

...opulation by legalizing drugs and letting them go. On the other hand, some of them might go back to their criminal life. There is no doubt that legalization of drugs would push criminals out of the drug business, but it will not make them leave their criminal life. Also it will be really hard for an ex-criminal to get a legal job. So, they will just chose some other form of criminal life. So legalizing drugs will have uncertain effects on violence reduction.

Works Cited

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/jun/13/bad-science-cocaine-study http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arguments_for_and_against_drug_prohibition#Economic_arguments_for_prohibitive_drug_laws http://qz.com/91642/the-economic-case-for-the-us-to-legalize-all-drugs/
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/30/should-latin-america-end-the-war-on-drugs/drug-legalization-could-create-more-crime

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