Legalization Of Narcotics Essay, Research Paper

Harmonizing to the National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information, about 5000 Americans each twenty-four hours seek marihuana for the first clip. This is with the limitations the United States authorities has on narcotics now. Imagine how many 1000s of scenarios such as David s there could be if drugs were made readily available.The Merriam-Webster lexicon defines narcotic as A drug ( as opium ) that in moderate doses dulls the senses, alleviations pain, and induces profound sleep but in inordinate doses causes daze, coma, or paroxysms. 2 Illegal narcotics include about anything in the households of pep pills, hemp, cocaine, psychedelic drugs, opioids, PCP, and barbiturates. Drug dependence is a signifier on captivity. It pathologically alters the nature, character and impairs the opinion of a human being. In 1906 Teddy Roosevelt passed the Pure Food and Drug act which restricted the sale of Dangerous or uneffective medical specialty. 3 In 1914, the Harrison Narcotic Act implemented even more rigorous narcotic control Torahs. These Acts of the Apostless nevertheless, did non wholly halt the spread and ingestion of illegal narcotics ; it merely created a war on drugs.The war on drugs began back in 1981 when Ronal Regan began pouring one million millions of dollars in an attempt to assist free the state of illegal substances. It is by far one of America s most expensive undertakings. Harmonizing to the National Review, America spends about 70 billion dollars per twelvemonth on narcotic related operations. This money is spent on captives who are already in gaol for related drug charges, the test clip of our bench in drug related instances, and the clip and disbursal of over four hundred 1000s police officers assisting to contend the drug war. This money spent does non include the disbursals for patronizing and funding plans such as D.A.R.E and drug rehabilitation centres that use the 12 measure plan. A study conducted by the Palm Beach Post mentioning to the drug war in America provinces In the 50 old ages that the U.S. populace has been asked to call the most of import job confronting the state, it is virtually unprecedented for any other societal issue to look at the top of the list. 4 The legalisation of narcotics is a hot issue among adolescents, parents, politicians, and economic experts. Some of these people feel that America should legalise narcotics and utilize the money that is spent on contending the drug war on better political dockets such as instruction and wellness attention reform. Some besides feel that we have foughtthe drug war for many old ages, and we should halt, due the fact that drug use has non had a important lessening in the past 10 old ages. Narcotics should non be legalized due to the grounds that if narcotics were legalized, drug usage would distribute exponentially, which may take to a significant addition in drug maltreatment, offense, and many domestic problems.Economist Dr. Richard Gilbert, the president of the Canadian Urban Institute and has written extensively on both drug and urban issues in America. He believes drug concern traders can non last if traders merely sold to traders, every bit good as traders non being able to last if they couldn t sell to the bulk of inner-city occupants. Furthermore, he believes in order for a drug concern to boom, there must be a ready beginning of clients. If drugs were legalized and sold under heavy limitations, which include a minimal age demand, this would bring forth gross for the authorities every bit good as put illegal wholesale traders out of concern due to the clients purchasing the narcotics from a different legal beginning. A study of 8098 Americans taken by the National Comorbidity Survey showed that 51 % of males and females from the ages of 15-54 have abused illegal drugs more than one time in their lives. When they were asked the ground for reiterating their drug maltreatment, over 80 % of those surveyed said it was due to the handiness of the drug. In other words those, 80 % of the 8098 surveyed would non hold been repeat wrongdoers of illegal drug use.had they non had a connexion to acquire more. The handiness of narcotics is one the grounds why we have repeat drug maltreaters. This is proven with the handiness of coffin nails compared to the handiness of diacetylmorphine. Cigarettes contain nicotine, which is a extremely habit-forming substance in baccy that is toxicant in concentrated sums. Anyone who is over 18 can walk into a spirits store or food market shop and purchase coffin nails. Those who are under the age of 18 normally have older equals or aliens walking purchase a spirits store who will be asked to buy coffin nails for them. Over 46 million Americans fume, about 3,000,000 of those are adolescents and kids. Harmonizing to the National Clearing House of Drug and Alcohol, there are 7000 new tobacco users per twenty-four hours. There is no denying the fact that coffin nails are readily available to virtually anyone. Heroin is an opiod which starts off as opium and is refined many times to go and psychologically. Daily usage for merely a short clip consequences in dependence. Heroin usage is much more serious and lifelessly than coffin nail usage. An single withdrawing from the high from diacetylmorphine may see lassitude, hallucination, paroxysms that may take to a daze or coma, and utmost temper swings, which may take to domestic force. There are and estimated 600,000 diacetylmorphine nuts in the United States today. There are besides and estimated 286 new diacetylmorphine users a twenty-four hours. The ground for the important difference between diacetylmorphine and coffin nail users is due to the fact that diacetylmorphine is illegal. Heroin, unlike coffin nails is non made readily available. If drugs were legalized and sold under tight controls as Dr. Richard Gilbert suggests, there would be minimal age demand set, which would most likely to be 18 or 21. This nevertheless will non halt bush leagues for deriving entree to heroin or any narcotic for that affair, merely as the minimal age demand doesn T stop bush leagues from deriving entree to cigarettes.According to USA Today, the legalisation of narcotics might temporarily take some of the burden off the condemnable justness system. A policy of this nature though would enforce many extra costs on the wellness attention and societal service systems, schools and the work topographic point. To set it simplistically, the legalisation narcotics will salvage some authorities disbursement on jurisprudence enforcement. However, if narcotics were legalized, taxpayers will be paying for increased public assistance services and wellness attention services for drug addicts. Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Justice studies that felons commit six times as many homicides, four times as many assaults, and about one and a half times as many robberies under the influence of drugs as they do in order to purchase drugs. Distribution of illegal drugs such as cocaine, diacetylmorphine, and marihuanas are controlled by organized offense. The harvest home, processing, and distribution of these drugs is a multi billion dollar international industry. It is extremely improbable that legalisation will alter the control that organized offense has over the industry. In fact, legalisation could beef up the place of organized offense worldwide. Harmonizing to the Drug Enforcement Agency a kg of diacetylmorphine has a street value of 250,000 dollars. It costs about 50 dollars to illicitly bring forth a kg of diacetylmorphine. A five thousand per centum markup. It would be the U.S. authorities anyplace from 1,000 dollars to 5,000 dollars to bring forth a kg of diacetylmorphine depending on the refinery procedure and criterions of production. For illustration, a little clip drug trader may bring forth diacetylmorphine in their garage, seting no criterions into consideration ; while the United States authorities will hold create ordinances and criterions, which will take clip and cost money. If the American authorities decides to legalise narcotics, this does non intend narcotics will be sold at a less expensive monetary value than an illegal drug jobber or drug tsars would sell them for. It would merely make competition due to the fact that narcotics will non be cheap to bring forth for the U.S. authorities. A minimal age demand will coerce illegal drug jobbers and drug tsars to concentrate on aiming bush leagues, and it would be virtually impossible for the U.S. authorities to bring forth a net income if prog-rams such as D.A.R.E. are still around. Further more, even if narcotics were to be legalized and sold by the U.S. authorities, there is nil that will halt illegal jobbers and drug tsars from go oning their concern. All of these factors taken into consideration may really beef up illegal drug jobbers and tsars, and place the war on drugs right back into square one. Joseph P. Kane has served as a chaplain at Riskers Island for over 20 old ages. He helped develop a course of study on condemnable justness issues for many high schools and is co-editor of Who Is The Prisoner? , which is a aggregation of original articles about the U.S. condemnable justness system. In an article he wrote for American Press, he asserts: Legalizing habit-forming drugs would likely increase their usage. At least we know that the abrogation of intoxicant prohibition had that consequence. So, how can we responsibly legalise narcotics? For the same grounds that we keep alcohol legal! Merely as we do non take to return to Prohibition because we do non desire pack wars, a turning discourtesy for jurisprudence, astronomical illegal net incomes, corrupted jurisprudence enforcement forces or the illness and even deceases from impure substances, so we do non desire our loved 1s & # 8211 ; whether nuts or societal users who want a bombilation from a drug or a drink & # 8211 ; to go involved with outlaws.5Kane s Statement ignores a few really of import factors. Death rates from cirrhosis among work forces came down from 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 to 10.7 per 100,000 in 1929. During prohibition, admittance to mental wellness establishments for intoxicant psychosis dropped 60 per centum ; apprehensions for rummy and disorderly behavior went down 50 per centum ; public assistance bureaus reported

significant declines in cases due to alcohol related family problems; and the death rate from impure alcohol did not rise. Furthermore, Alcohol unlike illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine, has a long history of broad social acceptance dating back to the Old Testament and Ancient Greece. Largely because of this, the public and political views favoring prohibition in the early century was brief. Today though, the public overwhelmingly favors keeping illegal drugs illegal. In fact, according to Palm Beach Post Wire Services, 77% of adults want tougher laws against drug users, and 92% want tougher laws against drug sellers. The Swiss began a national experiment of prescribing heroin to addicts in 1992. The four-year-old plan, started in the city Zurich, is strategically arranged to determine whether it will reduce drug and prohibition related crime, disease, and death by making pharmaceutical heroin legally available to addicts at regulated clinics. Ethan A. Nadleman is the director of the Lindesmith center, a drug research institute in New York. He believes The results of the experiment have been sufficiently encouraging that it is being extended to over a dozen Swiss cities. The Dutch and Australians are initiating similar experiments. There are no good scientific or ethical reasons not to try a heroin-prescription experiment in the United States. 6 While there is truth in Nadleman s statement, he forgets to mention the facts. The fact is Switzerland s plan has had many disastrous consequences. Switzerland s Needle Park, touted as a way to restrict a few hundred heroin addicts to a small area, turned into a repulsive tourist attraction of 20,000 heroin addicts and junkies that had to be closed down before it infected the city of Zurich. The ventures of England, the Netherlands, and Italy into drug legalization have had disastrous effects as well. In the Netherlands, anyone over the age of 17 can walk into a marijuana coffee shop and pick different types of marijuana just like one might choose different flavors of ice cream. Adolescent pot use there jumped nearly 200% while it was dropping by 66% in the United States. As the availability of drugs rose crime did as well. The complaints from city residents about the decline in their quality of life multiplied. Dutch persistence in selling pot has angered European neighbors because its wide open attitude towards marijuana is believed to be spreading pot and other drugs beyond the Netherlands borders. England s attempt allowing any doctor to prescribe heroin was quickly curbed as heroin use increased almost exponentially.In Italy, personal possession of small amounts of drugs has not been a crime in since 1975. Under decriminalization, possession of two to three doses of drugs such as heroin generally was exempt from criminal sanction Italy is infrequently mentioned by supporters of legalization, despite its lenient drug laws. This is because today Italy has over 300,000 heroin addicts, the highest rate of heroin addiction in Europe. Seventy percent of all AIDS cases in Italy are attributable to drug use. William F. Buckley, a writer for the National Review, was asked by the New York Bar Association to speak of America s current situation with the war on drugs. He stated: We are speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 per cent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen–yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect.7Even though America is not winning the drug war, progress is being made. The National Household Drug Survey, the nation s most extensive evaluation of drug usage, reports from 1979 to 1994, marijuana users dropped from 23 million to 10 million, while cocaine users fell from 4.4 million to 1.4 million. The drug using portion of the population is also aging. In 1979 10 percent were over the age of 34; today almost 30% are. Furthermore, the number of hardcore addicts has held steady at around 6 million, a situation most experts attribute to the unavailability of treatment and the large number of addicts. The U.S. government focuses more on eliminating the drug problem rather than just stopping the spread. This is the reason why the war on drugs has not been as successful as desired and also the reason why there have been arguments about legalizing narcotics altogether. There are many alternatives, rather than legalizing narcotics that will help reduce drug use, abuse, related crimes, and related domestic problems.Most of the money used to fight the drug war goes to federal agents, police, judges, court personnel, prison contractors, correctional officers, and parole officers. A very little amount goes towards the rehabilitation of those who use and abuse drugs. Addicts or junkies without out money have to wait four months before they receive therapy for free. The cause of rejection to such drug therapy programs result in never breaking the burden of addiction. A drug user incarcerated in New York City cost more than 150 dollars per day, while a drug therapy program costs only 75 dollars per day. Drug rehabilitation centers using the twelve step program have proven to be effective towards drug addicts and families with drug related problems. The twelve-step program, which is based on spiritual healing, is widely used by many drug rehabilitation centers and is very versatile towards many forms of addiction. The basic idea of the twelve-step program is for addicts to admit that they have been powerless when it comes to controlling their addictive behavior on their own. Meetings of various twelve-step programs are held daily in almost every city in the country. There are no dues or fees for membership, just a long wait. If the U.S. government focuses more on funding drug rehabilitation centers that use the twelve step program along with the help of the drug rehabilitation centers recruiting addicts, the result will be a decrease in the number of drug and alcohol addicts which will in turn decrease the money America spends on fighting the drug war. Many programs such as the Drug Abuse Resistance Education or D.A.R.E have been proven to be very effective. D.A.R.E s goals are to teach students at a young age the skills to recognize and turn down the opportunity to engage with alcohol, tobacco, illegal narcotics and any form of destructive behavior. They also promote a close relationship between the police department and the community. A survey taken by D.A.R.E. showed that 98.2 percent on students who were involved with the program, believed it was effective in teaching the concept of consequences. If programs such as these that teach drug education at a young age are emphasized more, the result would be less drug use by adolescents. Many challenges face federal, state and local law enforcement as we deal on a daily basis with the crime and violence drug trafficking creates. The situation however, should never justify the legalization of narcotics. Many people contend that the legalization of narcotics will solve our current crime problems, reduce drug abuse, and lessen the violence and profit associated with drug trafficking. They are simply wrong and uninformed. Legalization of narcotics would be a disaster that this nation should not have to face. The arguments for legalization are theoretical and hypothetical ideas that this nation should not testLegalization would increase risks and costs to individuals, families, and communities to every part of the nation without compensating benefits. Greater availability of drugs would lead to greater use and more overall problems associated with drug abuse. Society would battle with more transportation crashes and more industrial accidents due to impaired judgment, more educational failures, more homelessness, more destroyed careers and families, more child abuse and domestic violence, more AIDS, and more babies born addicted or handicap. Above all, legalization would send our children the wrong message. Our children are our most precious natural resource and they deserve the best this nation can offer. America must not abolish its responsibility to ensure that they have the safest, healthiest possible environment to grow up in; and a healthy environment certainly does not, cannot, include deadly drugs. Legalization is a simplistic response to a complex problem which took years to develop, and which requires some time to fix. It is the experience of many local police officers that crime is not only committed because people want to buy drugs, but more often because people use drugs. Drug use changes behavior and exacerbates criminal activity. Legalization would lead to increased use and increased addiction levels:Legalization sends a message that drug use is acceptable, and would encourage use among groups who do not use drugs now. When drugs have been widely available in the United States as morphine was at the time of the Civil War and cocaine was at the turn of the century both use and addiction rose.Any tax revenues reaped from legalizing and taxing drugs would soon evaporate into drug treatment costs, health care costs for drug related diseases, and the high costs associated with the increased family violence that would result. Despite our daily frustrations at the enormity of the drug problem in our nation, and indeed, around the world, we cannot afford to diminish our efforts to improve the quality of life for all Americans. . 2. ETHAN A. NADELMANN We turned to Mr. Nadelmann to pursue the inquiry. Formerly in the Political Science Department at Princeton, he is now the director of the Lindesmith Center, a drug-policy research institute in New York City. He is the author of COPS ACROSS BORDERS: THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF U.S. CRIMINAL LAW ENFORCEMENT.