Illicit drugs are drugs that the government consider to be too dangerous for the community, and the use of illegal drugs has been an overarching issue that has inflicted a plethora of costs upon society. The environment is subject to detrimental harm due to unregulated drug production. Furthermore, the money spent on law enforcement leads back to the tax-payer dollar and in addition to lost human productivity, amount to enormous amounts of money essentially wasted. Lastly, the public is at great risk of transmitting and contracting deadly diseases. Although illicit drug use is associated with several other costs to society, the environmental, financial and public health costs are the most significant, and will be discussed in this paper.
Drug abuse is a major problem throughout the world. Drugs can influence the everyday lives of people, whether they be users, dealers, drug-related crime victims, or the friends and family of a person affected. Violent crime, prostitution, government corruption, and more can all have a link to narcotics. Much of the world, including the United States, try to stop these effects of illicit drugs by focusing on stricter laws and enforcement. Yet this this approach may be counterproductive.
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.
Upon reading Gore Vidals "Case for Legalizing Marijuana" one may wonder why drugs are not legal in the United States of America. Afterall, several valid reasonings were made throughout the article. There is a demand for drugs and many people are supplying them, while also making a small fortune. If drugs were made legal and sold for high prices, their market would decrease because many people would not be able to afford them. Most people involved in the drug world do not know the consequences of that which they consume.
People will still use drugs for whatever reason it may be and probably not everyone will get stopped. This section it tells us that plugging in the gaps of the illicit drugs will be hard and some things will never get
I just believe the way our government has chosen to deal with the issue of drug use is likely not the best option, and now thousands of people are starting to realize this as well. Law enforcement has significantly ramped up in the last 40 years, as evidently shown by the large increase in spending towards law enforcement and the war on drugs. An estimated $1 trillion has been spent so far on attempting to rid the United States of drugs, which ultimately has been a major failure, as drug use is just as if not more widespread than it was before the war on drugs even began. Now think of all the things that money could have been put towards besides fighting drugs. If they had focused on combatting drug addiction rather than drugs themselves, then it would be much more likely that a decline in overall drug use would occur, as currently the cartels seem to have little struggle with flooding our country with drugs no matter how much we spend.
The 2014 National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA) Summary discourses evolving expansions associated with the trafficking and use of main illicit drugs abuse. The U.S. seizures of illegal substances in shipment exceeded 1,626 metric tons, demonstrating that DTOs have great succeed in shipping thousand tons of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, heroin, and MDMA into the United States each year. (DEA 2014) There are exceptional smuggling and shipping methods related with each drug type, but drug seizure statistics and federal, state, and local law enforcement reporting shows that smuggling overland and transportation by vehicle surpass all other methods of smuggling combined. The 2014 National Drug Control Strategy, in which has had very little
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).
The United States State Department estimates that 90% of cocaine arrive from the Mexican borders. Impressively many cartels operate methamphetamine labs and grow marijuana in many American states. In fact, seeking to stop the trade of illicit drugs the United States delivered $197 million to the Mexican government to fight against cartels. However, until the American citizens stop consuming cocaine the cause is hopeless. Although, the United States’ government has put impressive efforts to reduce the demand of cocaine, it remained the same as it used to be a few years ago.
The United States State Department estimates that 90% of cocaine arrive from the Mexican borders. Impressively many cartels operate methamphetamine labs and grow marijuana in many American states. In fact, seeking to stop the trade of illicit drugs the United States delivered $197 million to the Mexican government to fight against cartels. However, until the American citizens stop consuming cocaine the cause is hopeless. Although, the United States’ government has put impressive efforts to reduce the demand of cocaine, it remained the same as it used to be a few years ago.
The first issue, drug trafficking has been around for many, many decades now. It is proving more than ever to be an intense problem to maintain a handle on within the criminal justice system. Drug trafficking
Behind the drug trafficking lie true roots of the phenomenon are the
According to Brianna Lee in Mexico’s Drug War, “more than 90 percent of cocaine now travels through Mexico into the United States, up from 77 percent in 2003.” Therefore, drug trafficking is at a higher Smith 2 rate than it was 12 years ago with just one illegal drug. With other illegal drugs that are trafficking added to this list the percentage would grow and the demand of illegal drugs will rise. We have to also keep in mind that this drug trafficking alone is only into the United States, imagine how high the demand of illegal drugs is in other countries coming from Mexico. The war on drugs has failed for many years, and is the reason drug trafficking is still highly rising.
The supply of drugs would dry up quickly, however, if there were not an incessant, powerful demand for them in this country. America has an estimated $80 billion a year habit in illegal drugs, and the legal attacks on one kind of drugs (heroin in the 1950s, psychedelic substances and marijuana in the 1960s), only made consumers to turn to other substances (cocaine and its refined crystal "crack" in the 1970s and 1980s). The demand for illegal drugs is so great that removal of the source of supply in, say, Latin America, would only cause production to begin somewhere else. This is precisely what happened with opium and heroin, when production moved from Turkey to Southeast Asia and then to Mexico between 1950 and 1975, and with marijuana, which came largely from Mexico until the 1960s, but which is now produced domestically on a large scale. The lesson is obvious: "The problem really lies not with the drug-producing countries but with consuming countries like the U.S., which provide an avid market for their output."
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.