The Pros and Cons of Drug Legalization Drugs. When you hear this word, what does it mean to you? For some a drug might be a prescription from a doctor to numb their pain. For others, drugs could be the cup of coffee they drink every morning to avoid a migraine from the caffeine withdrawal;drugs can be the 10- minute cigarette break every few hours, and drugs can be someone cringed over in an alleyway shaking and waiting for their next fix. No matter what the word means to you, there is a general consensus that drugs can be both positive and negative. The legalization of drugs is a well disputed topic in today’s society that could have many positive and negative effects. Some people believe legalizing drugs would be beneficial because there …show more content…
This would lead to more drug addicts. According to Charles Schuster (1990), the author of the article “Drug legalization: Pro and con” the legalization of drugs would just lead to more drug users steering them into addiction. With the legalization of drugs, the supply would be greater than the demand, creating a surplus of substances (Shuster, 1990). In other words, there would be so many drugs available that people who really want to use drugs could acquire them as easily as buying groceries from a grocery. This could lead to many hazardous situations such as people driving vehicles while under the influence of drugs. We have already seen how dangerous driving while under the influence of alcohol is and could assume driving while high on drugs would lead to the same …show more content…
The government could tax all drugs and regulate them in a way that produces profit and job openings for the economy. This money would be spent on education, roads, and other important projects taxes pay for, improving civilization in many ways. For example, schools would have updated technology and more educated teachers. This would help students learn better and prepare these future workers for the real world. Students that are well educated have a smaller chance of doing drugs than kids who are poorly educated. Having better educated children typically generates a better working class, therefore putting the future of our economy in better hands. Tax money from drugs could also be used for repairing and improving infrastructure. Better roads and bridges make it easier to get around, has a better visual appeal, and might attract more people to urban areas. Overall society would be improved and the economy would be
So long as people continue to use illicit drugs, the drug trade and all the problems that go with it will continue. This fact has led to an enormous debate as to whether legalizing drug use will reduce the problem. Many think that, if drugs were legalized, this would take the profit out of the sales, and reduce the drug cartels’ ability to generate the revenues necessary to conduct their operations. Legalization of drugs also would enable the U.S. government to tax the sale of drugs, and to use those revenues for programs designed to help stop people from using them. That debate, however, is the subject of another civics presentation.
The war on drugs failed. The government spent billions of dollars fighting drug use to no avail. Statistics shown in The Boston Globe state overall drug use among children ages twelve to seventeen had actually gone up from 5.7% in 1993 to 9% in 1999(Health Central). Other statistics reveal areas of decreased usage; however, the same statistics do not show the vast numbers of addicted people abusing Methamphetamines or popular club drugs like Ecstasy. Ending drug usage is likely impossible. So why are we spending billions of dollars on a lost cause? Legalization of drugs would decrease tremendous amounts of wasted money, money that could be spent on treatment for addiction. Although many people feel that legalizing drugs would increase the amount of use, marijuana should be legalized because it will reduce massive amounts of money spent on enforcement, increase our country's revenue, and provide some relief from chronic pain caused by diseases like multiple sclerosis and others.
In this essay I will define drug abuse and show the economic impact of the sales of illicit drugs. I will introduce an argument for legalization and the impact to the economy. Next I will discuss some of the economic cost from lack of productivity, health care cost and other cost associated with Drug abuse.
I think that if drugs were legalized, use of legal drugs would tend to rise because it would be easier to obtain them and it may encourage people to try them out. However, the increase would only be for a short time period. In the long run, drug use would decrease because all the users that are using more drugs because they are easier to get would overdose and kill themselves and set an example for other people thinking about trying drugs. Another reason why drug use would decrease is that the reason why some people use drugs is because they are illegal.
Many feel today we are loosing the war on drugs. People consider legalization unnecessary. They feel that it will increase the amount of drug use throughout the world. They state that in many cases, drug users who have quit quit because of trouble with the law. Legalization would eliminate the legal forces that discourage the users from using or selling drugs. They also say that by making drugs legal, the people who have never tried drugs for fear of getting caught by the law will have no reason to be afraid anymore and will become users (Potter 1998).
As human beings, we are naturally curious about different things in our society. We want to absorb as much knowledge as possible, whether it is in a classroom environment or by experiencing it ourselves. When it comes to illegal drugs, people want to experience it for themselves since it has a different effect on each individual. In the United States, the drug use is quite high. Different legislators and philosophers believe that legalizing drugs will have more benefits than harms to our society. I believe that it will be the opposite. In this paper, I will present several arguments about why certain drugs should not be legalized, but decriminalized instead.
Introduction The legalization of marijuana is considered a controversial issue, something that can benefit people for medical purposes, but what about recreationally? Marijuana has been illegal since 1937, but there’s never been a bigger push for legalization. There are several reasons why it is illegal, because of government propaganda and big industry not wanting to lose money, but this will be discussed later. The purpose of this paper is to educate, theorize, and discuss various aspects of marijuana, such as its history, development, and the advantages and disadvantages of marijuana legalization. Finally, my personal reflection on legalization and marijuana in general will be discussed.
There are plenty of advantages to legalizing drugs. First marijuana is safer than alcohol and is not a lethal drug. Also getting a marijuana overdose is impossible and it’s not as addictive as tobacco or alcohol. Legalizing drugs may even reduce the crime because the drugs will be easier to get. People won’t have to buy the drugs on the street which can reduce the black market, because most of the gangs and cartels will have to either quit selling the drugs or open up a legal business. Another reason legalizing drugs is beneficial is that the prisons are overcrowding with people who owned or sold drugs. If we took everybody out of the prisons that are associated with drugs, our prisons would be less crowded, rather than way over the maximum. This would also save many tax dollars because they won’t be spent on trying to keep people in prisons. Maybe if we legalize ...
ways--both positively and negatively. Drugs often have a bad name even though they help us everyday in medical cases. and the drugs with the worst reputations are not the most abused drugs One may benefit from the legalization of drugs in
The legalization of cocaine would allow our nation to decrease the over population in our prison. The United States has one of the highest incarceration rate compared to anywhere else in the world. Many of those individuals incarcerated for nonviolent drug related crimes. These individuals are forced to spend a majority of their lives in prison due to the Mandatory Minimums laws. Legalizing cocaine would allow us to lower our incarceration rates, by letting those who have nonviolent drug crimes free. Cocaine would also bring in a lot of tax money to our communities. By legalizing it, we could use the extra money for our communities; to better our schools funds and further our education. Allow the legalization of cocaine can bring great benefits to our nation it can also tear it apart. With drugs comes violence. Individuals who do drugs are more likely to commit drugs because they are not in the right state of mind; they do not realize what they are doing and cannot comprehend the consequences that follow their actions. The frequent use of cocaine brings the addiction. Cocaine increases your levels of dopamine giving you that high. An individual that uses cocaine regularly will build a tolerance to the drug meaning they will need more and more of the drug to feel the same high; this is what leads to addiction. Addiction is an everyday
The good clearly outweigh the bad effects of legalizing marijuana. Other drugs? Definitely not. The health and social ills pose too great of a risk to society to legalize those kinds of drugs. But marijuana on the other hand helps people with health issues, produces tax revenue from states and takes drug money off of the streets. In my own opinion I believe marijuana should be the only dug legalized. It’s inevitable that the drug trade will always be a problem to the society and it’s the government’s responsibility to reduce it and actually make a profit from drug legalization.
Drug addiction is a chronic which always the brain disease is relapsed that leads to the seeking of compulsive drugs (NIH 2012). Nowadays, drug abuse still is a serious issue for a long time although the government tries to control the drugs by rigorous imprisonment and better education program. Some people cannot understand that why and how people can be a drug addicted person. And the drug users are regarded as the lack of moral principles or willpower (National Institute on Drug Abuse 2012). People think there is no way to reduce the number of the people who take drugs, so drugs should be legalized. Another reason is that the drugs illegal poses threat to society. If the drug is legal, the society would be more peaceful. As far as I am concern,
However, it seems we will never see the legalization of drugs. Many people go out and do things just because the authoritative figures say you shouldn't do them. In other words, certain people merely break the law not to experience the drug, but to be a rebel. The legalization of drugs would most likely cause the use of drugs to decline.
Legalizing recreational drugs does not mean making drugs accesible to all people. The drugs that are legal today, alcohol and tobacco (nicotene) aren’t available to just everyone; they are regulated. Only certain people are allowed to buy them. Since the drug trade is unregulated, drugs are sold anywhere they can be (e.g. schools), allowing children to have access to them. If these drugs were illegal, than that trade would stagnate, and children wouldn’t have such easy access to them. It makes sense… do you ever see people in schools selling beer or cigarrettes? Also, the usual cause of drug overdose is the fact that a person cannot know the potency of the drug he/she is taking. There are no standards because the trade of drugs is illegal in the first place. If they were legal, there would be a standard of quality for all drugs, regulated by the FDA.
It seems that in the ongoing debate over whether to legalize drugs in the United States, quite a few people feel that legalization would diminish the crime rate. Their argument points out that the permissible use of marijuana would eliminate the necessity for people to go into hard drug territories to purchase such a drug and maybe even deter them from trying narcotics like crack-cocaine and heroin. Even though these people assert that legalization could diminish crime rate, they forget to realize that alcohol and nicotine are legal psychoactive drugs and have detrimental hazards on our society. Since these drugs are easily obtainable, they are more often used by people of all ages. Although education about nicotine effects decreased smoking in our country, the crimes related to alcohol abuse are still staggering in our community due to the easy accessibility and acceptance from the population in general. The way alcohol impairs a person's brain it is amazing that more efforts have not been made to in some way deter people from drinking like they have been deterred from smoking. Prohibition is out since it has been acceptable and we know what happened when we did try to prohibit alcohol. If we were to legal other drugs, it would be hard to rescind the decision much like with alcohol and nicotine. Legalization is a scary issue when it is looked upon in this respect.