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Mass incarceration and drugs essay
Effects of drugs use on society
Mass incarceration and drugs essay
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My first proposal that I would recommend would be to legalize minor drugs, such as marijuana and cocaine, those drugs should be removed from the criminal-justice system and regulated in a manner similar to alcohol and tobacco. The criminalization of marijuana and cocaine disproportionately harms young people and people of color, besides it sponsors massive levels of violence and corruption. Furthermore, it adds up to the mass incarceration problem. “Erwin Chemerinsky, points out” Michelle Alexander wrote, Mandatory sentencing laws were frequently justified as necessary to keep “Violent criminals” off the streets, yet those penalties are imposed most often against drug offenders and those who are guilty of nonviolent crimes...” (91). In agreement
with Michelle Alexander, those laws are only locking up a generation of young men for relatively minor in infraction, and it has turned out to be a worsening threat to public safety, not a solution. By legalizing marijuana and cocaine, we could raise money from its taxes, and investing in education and jobs. Incarcerating people with drug charges does not make America safer, instead it harms people of color, children, families and poor communities. Considering the proposal to legalizing marijuana and cocaine as soon as possible so you can enforce this law, as a result, everyone could benefit from it, the citizens as well as the government. It would also help towards mass incarceration, minimizing its population by a lot.
Marijuana also known as weed, is a green mixture of dry, shredded leaves and flowers of a hemp plant known as Cannabis sativa. Research has shown that marijuana has been around since the 1920s. People use marijuana because of the after affects. Studies have shown marijuana makes you feel delightful, it increases satisfaction while smoking, if you’re stressed, after smoking the marijuana you’ll be on cloud nine and the stress will no longer be present. Society has influenced people to smoke marijuana more each day. After interviewing a series of marijuana users, they’ve told me that marijuana is a safe, harmless drug, that is used for meditation. In order to smoke the marijuana, you’ll use some form of paper to roll it up with.
handle the War on Drug? One very important topic in any conversation about drug abuse is drug abuse prevention. We should be regarding illcit drugs as health and social issue once we make the decision, we have to raise the funding for health and social intervention. Penalties should be cut that to point where you should not be going to prison for 10 years for a small amount of drugs. Have better drug education class for schools and communities. Public health issues can be solved only by changing the environment that means the focus off the individual and putting on the whole world where their individual live. The world that influences the choices that people
A big step in lowering incarceration rates is federally regulating marijuana. About 64% of inmates convicted of drug offenses have no history of violent crimes. These inmates need rehabilitation not incarceration. Possession of marijuana should be treated more like a traffic violation rather than a reason to send people to jail. The government would still collect their money and in turn not have to pay the costs of housing a prisoner.
Lately it seems that drug policy and the war on drugs has been in the headlines quite a lot. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the policies that the United States government takes against illegal drugs are coming into question. The mainstream media is catching on to the message of organizations and individuals who have long been considered liberal "Counter Culture" supporters. The marijuana question seems to be the most prevalent and pressed of the drugs and issues that are currently being addressed. The messages of these organizations and individuals include everything from legalization of marijuana for medical purposes, to full-unrestricted legalization of the drug. Of course, the status quo of vote seeking politicians and conservative policy makers has put up a strong resistance to this "new" reform lobby. The reasons for the resistance to the changes in drug policies are multiple and complex. The issues of marijuana’s possible negative effects, its use as a medical remedy, the criminality of distribution and usage, and the disparity in the enforcement of current drug laws have all been brought to a head and must be addressed in the near future. It is apparent that it would be irresponsible and wrong for the government to not evaluate it’s current general drug policies and perhaps most important, their marijuana policy. With the facts of racial disparity in punishment, detrimental effects, fiscal strain and most importantly, the history of the drug, the government most certainly must come to the conclusion that they must, at the very least, decriminalize marijuana use and quite probably fully legalize it.
the only way to make money. Minimum wage salaries can not compare to the huge
in Colorado and Washington as not only medicinal, but recreational use. They have also begun
Now is not the time for the United States federal government to decriminalize or legalize illegal drugs, including marijuana. However, nor can the government continue to do nothing about the financially, economically, and socially expensive domestic drug policy it currently follows. The United States Congress should pass legislation to remove mandatory minimum penalties from drug offenses, and the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons should add in-house rehabilitation programs for its incarcerated drug offenders. These policies would increase the cost-effectiveness of current drug policy and reduce crime and drug use, and do not face the political obstacles or have the uncertain consequences of decriminalizing or legalizing drugs.
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.
In 1989, a Republican county executive of Mercer County, N.J., estimated that it would cost approximately one billion dollars to build the jail space required to house all the drug users in Trenton alone (Roffman 1982). All of this money could be spent on things of greater importance. Not only has the drug problem increased, but the drug related problems are on the rise. Drug abuse is a killer worldwide. Some are born addicts (crack babies), while others develop addictions later in life.
The arguments that I have just laid out are not perfect and they have some apparent flaws that some philosophers would strongly disagree with, while there are other arguments that some of the great philosophers would agree with. I will critique the arguments that I have just laid out using the perspective of three different philosophers who all have their own ideas of how the state should function and the role of the citizen. The three philosophers that I will use in this critique will be Karl Marx, John Stewart Mill, and John Locke. The reason why I picked these three philosophers is because they all agree with some aspects of my writing, while disagreeing with others. One will disagree with the role of the state and the citizens, but agree with legalizing recreational drug use, while the other two will agree with the role of the state and citizens, but disagree with legalizing drug use.
The drug control policy of the United States has always been a subject of debate. From Prohibition in the early 1930’s to the current debate over the legalization of marijuana, drugs have always been near the top of the government’s agenda. Drug use affects every part of our society. It strains our economy, our healthcare, our criminal justice systems, and it endangers the futures of young people. In order to support a public health approach to drug control, the Obama administration has committed over $10 billion to drug education programs and support for expanding access to drug treatment for addicts (Office). The United States should commit more government resources to protect against illegal use of drugs by youths and provide help for recovering addicts.
A 2012 poll showed that 58% of Americans are in favor of decriminalization of drugs like Marijuana, as opposed to 12% back in 1969. [1] Many Americans feel that the war on drugs has failed, and that our police officers and other federal institutions could be making better use of their time, effort, and fiscal resources. The cost of this war on drugs has become so great. Not only does the war cost billions to enforce, but countless lives are lost as the cartels become more violent in their pursuit of power.
Recreational drug use has been controversial for years. Government has deemed the use of certain drugs to be dangerous, addictive, costly, and fatal. Governmental agencies have passed laws to make drugs illegal and then have focused a great deal of attention and money trying to prohibit the use of these drugs, and many people support these sanctions because they view the illegality of drugs to be the main protection against the destruction of our society (Trebach, n.d.). Restricting behavior doesn’t generally stop people from engaging in that behavior; prohibition tends to result in people finding more creative ways to obtain and use drugs. However, just knowing that trying to control people’s behavior by criminalizing drug use does not work still leaves us looking for a solution, so what other options exist? This paper will discuss the pros and cons about one option: decriminalizing drugs.
The topic of legalizing recreational marijuana in the United States has been a very controversial one. States such as Colorado and Washington have gone on the offensive and have legalized recreational marijuana and have enjoyed the high revenues brought in from cannabis sale. On the other hand other states have kept low profiles because they are wary of the possible negative outcomes of legalizing recreational marijuana and are using the states of Colorado and Washington as guinea pigs to see what their next course of action on this controversial topic should be. This is not only a highly debated topic among politicians, but also by the people. According to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center 52% of Americans support the legalization of marijuana and 72% of Americans believe anti-marijuana laws have more cost than benefit. Recreational marijuana will sooner or later be legalized in the United States on a nationwide level because of its popularity and its many benefits. It will be legalized because the consumption of alcohol, cigarettes, prescription drugs, and other illicit drugs by teenagers has gone down drastically as they have switched to marijuana which doesn’t carry as many dangers as these other drugs. Legalizing marijuana would hurt drug cartels profits and also help the U.S. economy in a couple of different ways; we could tax it , we would make revenue from marijuana, and the amount of money we would put on anti drug efforts and locking up prisoners on marijuana possession would drastically reduce. Finally, legalizing marijuana would allow us to use it for its many commercial and industrial purposes.
With America’s war on drugs being highly focused on the increased use of marijuana, there is not much time for officers to focus on crimes of greater importance. Crimes related to illegal marijuana use are becoming more problematic due to drug deals that go bad, occasionally ending with murder. It has been estimated that one marijuana-related arrest is made every 42 seconds. With marijuana being illegal, keeping crime related activities under control cost the United States approximately twenty billion dollars per year (Sledge). According to Brian Bremner and Vincent Del Giudice, “A 2010 study by the libertarian Cato Institute, forecasted that states could save $17.4 billion annually from reduced drug enforcement costs and increased tax revenue, assuming marijuana production and sales were legal nationwide” (11). Several law enforcement hours are exhausted with pursing, questioning, and arresting citizens that are in possession of or consuming marijuana. There would be a decrease in the number of misdemeanor possession cases that are pending hearing. These cases would be dismissed, decreasing costs affiliated with each case. There are excessive numbers of people who remain incarcerated for nonviolent crimes related to illegal marijuana use. Legalizing marijuana would allow these people to be released, opening jail space for the true criminals. Legalizing marijuana would free up law enforcement officers from focusing on illegal marijuana use and allow focus to be put on more serious