Drug Prohibition The title of the editorial is “Meth isn’t an argument for prohibition. It demonstrates prohibition’s failure.” and the author of the editorial is Radley Balko. Radley Balko is a reporter for The Washington Post and also The Huffington Post. He reports about criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties. Radley is also an author of a book named “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces”. This editorial is targeted to persuade lawmakers and anyone else opposing meth being legal. Lawmakers passed laws that made it more difficult to acquire pseudoephedrine because they believed it would prevent meth from being produced. Several years passed and that clearly is not the case according to several …show more content…
For example, Rodley mentions that in the year 2005 Nebraska restricted the sale of cold medicine and the number of meth lab seizures fell from 321 in 2004 to just 9 in 2012. Yet eight years after the law took effect, Nebraska law enforcement official still stated that meth was the “single biggest threat”. One drug task force reported that there was a 1,000 percent increase in meth seizures from 2011 to 2013. He then mentions Missouri, another state that also passed a law that requires an ID to purchase cold medicine that contains pseudoephedrine. The state soon passed additional laws further restricting the sale of the medicine. The laws prevented the sale of thousands of boxes of cold medicine. The laws were far from success. “We still have a tremendous meth problem,” said Southeast Missouri Drug Task Force director Mark McClendon, “But it’s importation. That’s where the problem is… There’s still lots of imported meth in the area. It’s very prevalent.” Radley gives fantastic facts because not only does he include statistics, but he also quotes from a reliable source, the drug task …show more content…
Radley said “ Here’s one idea that makes too much sense for anyone to seriously consider: Legalize amphetamines for adults. Divert some of the money currently spent on enforcement toward the treatment of addicts. Save the rest. Watch the black markets dry up, and with them the itinerant crime, toxicity and smuggling. Cold and allergy sufferers get relief. Cops can concentrate on other crimes. Pharmacists can go back to being health-care workers, instead of deputized drug cops. Everybody wins…” He stated all the benefits that would occur if meth became legal. Rodley logically thought of a solution and expressed it crystal clear. Some readers may feel that this editorial actually is not persuasive because meth is a terrible drug that should be kept illegal and more people would try meth if it becomes legal. But in reality, legalizing meth reveals that the editorial is effective because if we kept the drug illegal that still would not stop a person from desiring and acquiring meth and more people would not try meth because if a person wanted to try meth they would have done it before it became
Legalizing a drug that’s been illegal for decades seems intimidating and nerving but if we instead focus on all the good that comes from legalization, we just may be taking a step towards the right
As director of the National Drug Control Policy, William J. Bennett shares his stance on the drug war in “Drug Policy and the Intellectuals”. He addresses the arguments that American’s have proposed in regard to the legalization of drugs. Bennett goes on to say that the justification behind legalizing drugs lacks the seriousness that a topic like this should have. In addition, the results would likely be disastrous. Rather than “taking the profit out of the drug business”, Bennett’ alternative is to make the usage of drugs a less appealing option.
The government went from ignoring the problem to being very alarmed. The Combat Methamphetamine Act was passed in September 2006 (Reding, P. 67). This was to attempt decreasing the supplies, so the meth would be harder to produce but it did the opposite. It created a new formula for meth that
Chapter two introduces the policy problems related to the War on Drugs, as well as other policies that banned or limited other use of alcohol and drugs. Authors start with the history of the regulations of mood altering substances that began in colonial times, and then it escalated with “The Father of Modern Drug Enforcement”, Dr. Hamilton Wright. President Roosevelt assigned him to be the first Opium Drug Commissioner of the United States. Dr. Wright saw drugs as a big problem, according to the text the drug prohibitions started with his opinions on limiting drug use. In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act was signed and required the labeling of the ingredients of the products.
While there are many reasons to be for the legalization of drugs, many people forget that the reason they’re illegal is to discourage drug
In the case of drug use and the legalization of drugs Carry Woodford has the wrong idea. Woodford believes that every type of drug should become illegal, this meaning even the use of even medical drugs such as Penicillin, insulin, and others would not be allowed to help someone with such issues requiring to aid someone by Woodford idea. And while i can't agree with fully legalizing all drugs, i am with the idea of banning some drugs such as cocaine, heroin and others that have no benefits to oneself . There are some other reason why it’s beneficial to legalize helpful drugs, it would help create more jobs and will reduce the drug trafficking for some but not all drugs. A example of how a drug has help create jobs and has slowly reduced drug
In 1970, President Richard Nixon, in response to the drug use coupled with the hippie counterculture of the late 1960s, signed the Controlled Substance Act (CSA) which enacted a method of classifying drugs by categorizing them into five schedules, schedule one considered to be the most dangerous. Shortly following this act, in June of 1971, Nixon declared “The War On Drugs”, famously naming drugs and drug abuse “Public enemy number one”. (History.com, 2016). Following Nixon’s presidency, many presidents and administrations, including Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, have continued the support for The War on Drugs, but where are the results? It seems today that the abuse of drugs is worse than ever before.
Overall, Gore Vidal’s argument of legalizing drugs is very compelling. The style of writing is unique and keeps the reader interested. Vidal takes a popular argument (in 2016) and provides a sound argument in support of
So why not attack the problem at the fuse directly? The world could be totally different as we have lost so many potential world changers and future leaders due to our war on drugs. The difference is on the way and should happen soon. Now if we look at the not so obvious benefits of the decriminalization of all drugs. Imagine a society where medical offices are allowed to make strides in cancer as HIV we have already discussed would start to have a decreasing rate in the reduction of needle sharing within society.
For example, agencies have been established with the sole intent to manage drug use and distribution and technology has been exclusively developed to detect the presence of drugs. Yet, evidence has indicated that such exhaustive efforts have been relatively unsuccessful. First, it has been assumed that drugs have perpetuated violence in society and based on this rationale, it was believed that by the suppressing the pervasiveness of drugs that incidents of violence would simultaneously diminish. However, reality has failed to align with the expectations that had initially been anticipated. Research findings have suggested that the decriminalization of drugs would result in a less adversarial drug market in which conflicts have tended to arise among dealers as well as between dealers and buyers (Common Sense for Drug Policy, 2007, p. 21).
Drugs are the dangerous substances that will destroy the consumer both physically and mentally; therefore, it is necessary to determine these substances restrictively. In order to do that, I am strongly assuring that the drugs should be legalized. There are three main reasons why the drugs should be legalized: diminution of crime rates, health guarantee, and extending of drugs regulation. Drugs are one of the crime sources, although not by the drugs, itself, but the condition. Illegal drugs are rare products that could not be found in the normal market, the cost for its rarity is totally expensive.
If there was an open market for drugs and Americans’ were educated on the effects drugs can have on their bodies, the monopoly for drugs would rapidly decrease. Drugs are outlawed in America yet prohibition has never been successful in America. Anytime the government has tried to stop the distribution of a substance people have always jumped at the chance to make
General Purpose: To Inform Specific Purpose: To inform the audience about the drug abuse in the United States both throughout history and currently. Central Idea: The War on Drugs was first brought up on 1971 by Richard Milhous Nixon our 37th president. The budget to initiate the war on drugs was roughly 100,000,000 million dollars, currently as we speak for every 21 seconds a drug arrest is taking place in the United States according to drugpolicy.org.
‘Public concern about drug use, although it had been building throughout the 1980s, fairly exploded late in 1985 and early in 1986 (Goode, 1994). One question to ask though was if the concern was warranted or focused on the most harmful drugs. In 1986 a Gallup poll was taken which asked which drug was the most dangerous for American society, ‘At 42%, "crack" and "other forms of cocaine" beat "alcohol abuse" by eight percentage points -- even though there are far more alcoholics than crack addicts.’ (Robison, 2002). It’s interesting to note that Hetfield himself was not a cocaine or heroin abuser.
As of recent, the war on drugs has been a very often discussed topic due to many controversial issues. Some people believe the War on Drugs has been quite successful due to the amount of drugs seized and the amount of drug kingpins arrested. I believe this to be the wrong mindset when it comes to the war on drugs. The war on drugs isn’t a winnable one so we must do all that is possible to assist those who struggle with drug addiction and decriminalize small amounts of drugs. These minor changes in the way we combat drugs will create significant change and have lasting effects.