Term Papers on Drug Legalization

Term Paper Title	Drug Legalization
# of Words	6657
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	26.63

Drug Legalization

    However, drugs should not be legalizied because there

would be an increase in drug abuse due to its availability.

Legalized drugs would become cheaper and more accessible to

people who previously had not tried drugs. Addicts who tend to

stop, not by choice, would not stop because drugs would be more

accessible if legalized.

     The result of drug abuse is thousands of addicts in denial.

The good news is that the United States had 286 million dollars

and 81,762 drug seizures due to drugs in 1989 alone, but the

bad news is that the number of prisoners has reached 70 percent

which will cost the taxpayers 30 million dollars a year to

incarcerate them annually.1 (U.S. Department of Justice 1996)

     What evidence have health and police officials shown us

about drug abuse? Will legalization of drugs effect low income

families? Do crime and drug abuse go hand-in-hand? What medical

effects does drug abuse have on our children?

     For several decades drugs have been one of the major

problems of society. There have been escalating views on the war

against drugs and countless dollars spent on rehabilitation, but

the problem still exists. Not only has the problem increased but

drug related problems are on the rise. Drug abuse is a killer in

our country. Some are addicts, while others  become users.

Has drug abuse played a part in criminal activity? If so how?

What will happen to our society, if drugs are legalized?

Legalization of drugs is not in our future of our country.

     Why does the idea of legalization appear and reappear when

there is so little support for such a notion? Some proponents of

legalization are seeking to normalize the behavior of drug-

taking, and many of them are people who use, or have used drugs

with little significant adverse impact. Many proponents are

wealthy members of the elite who live in suburbs and have never

seen the damage that drugs and violence have wrought on poor

communities, and for whom legalization is a abstract concept.2

(Constantine, 1995)

     An overwhelming majority of Americans are unequivocally

opposed to legalization of drugs.2 (Constantine, 1995) They

understand that many crimes are committed by people using drugs

not to support their habit, but because drugs provoke the user’s

criminal nature. The majority of Americans understand that our

crime problem will get worse, not better, if drugs were more

widely available to our society.

     From a simplistic proposal, lets ask proponents some hard

questions. Would we legalize all drugs, cocaine, heroin, and

LSD, as well as marijuana? Who would be able to obtain these

drugs, adults only? Who would be responsible for the

distribution of these drugs, private companies, doctors, or the

government? Where should the central distribution point be, drug

supermarkets in Norfolk, Atlanta, Washington, a big city, or

should they be handed out at government offices?

     How much are we willing to pay to address the costs of

increased drug use? How will we deal with the black market that

will be created to support the cheaper, purer drugs?

     May we set up a pilot legalization program on your block?

Now let’s ask the proponents of drug legalization if they want

it on their block.2 (Constantine, 1995)

     Would we be able to get money from taxing drugs if they

were legalized? But would we lose more money than we would make

in costs of drug treatment for addicts and in lost worker

productivity. Take a look at alcohol. We spend 10.5 billion

dollars per year on health care involving alcohol, and an

estimated 140 to 210 billion dollars in lost worker

productivity. There are 17,000 people killed a year in alcohol

related automobile accidents.3 (Finley, 1995) The money we make

off of the excise tax for alcohol is not worth this.

     Drug legalization would not necessarily w...

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