Reasons to Legalize All Drugs
Legalization would free up billions of dollars the government is currently spending on police, courts, and corrections to wage the war on drugs, and generate significant tax revenue. The money saved could then be spent on drug education, addiction treatment and enforcement initiatives targeting more serious crimes. Ultimately, even though hard drugs pose greater health risks than marijuana, we cannot rationally prohibit them without comparing the harms of prohibition to the harms of the drugs themselves. In a society that legalizes drugs, users are only confronted with the negative aspects of use. Under the prohibition, they also risk being arrested, fined, losing their professional licenses, etc. Prohibition clearly harms those who use despite prohibition. But perhaps the best reason to legalize hard drugs is that people who want to use them have the same freedom to determine their own well-being as those who use alcohol or marijuana or whatever. In a free society, the assumption must always be that individuals, not the government, can decide what is in their own interest. Data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show the gap between the use of legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco and increasingly marijuana) and illicit drugs. Among Americans 12 and older, about 51 percent have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days, while about 21 percent have used tobacco. The percentage of those who used marijuana is almost 12%, which is considerably higher than those who used opioids (1%) or cocaine (0.7%). It is true that we know from many ancient societies that they used drugs for medicinal and ritual purposes, but also for leisure and pleasure 7. From the ancient Greeks to Sigmund Freud`s cocaine use, the history of human societies has always been a history of drugs.
For drug users, the high price of illicit drugs makes it difficult and often impossible to obtain the drug without committing further crimes. Unemployed heroin addicts, for example, cannot easily find ways to finance their addiction without resorting to robbery and robbery to obtain the funds needed to buy the drugs they need. A state-controlled drug distribution system could easily solve these problems and make them available to those who need them at little or no cost. This would benefit society as a whole. We`ve come a long way since Reefer Madness. Over the past two decades, 16 states have decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana and 22 have legalized it for medical purposes. In November 2012, Colorado and Washington went even further and legalized recreational marijuana under state law. Public attitudes toward marijuana have also changed; In a November 2013 Gallup poll, 58% of Americans supported marijuana legalization. This is understandable: different drugs carry different risks, and the potential for serious harm from marijuana is lower than for cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine.
Marijuana, for example, does not seem capable of causing a fatal overdose, but cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine can kill if taken in excess or under the wrong circumstances. Proponents of legalization admit that consumption would likely increase, but counter that it is not clear that the increase would be very large or time-consuming, especially if legalization were paired with appropriate public education programs. They, too, cite historical evidence to support their claims, noting that opium, heroin, and cocaine use had already begun to decline before prohibition went into effect, that alcohol consumption did not suddenly increase after prohibition was repealed, and that the decriminalization of cannabis use in 11 U.S. states in the 1970s did not lead to a dramatic increase in use. Some also point to the legal sale of cannabis products through regulated outlets in the Netherlands, which also does not appear to have significantly encouraged consumption by Dutch nationals. Opinion polls showing that most Americans would not rush to try previously banned drugs that suddenly became available are also being used to bolster the case for legalization. The war on drugs has cost society more than drug abuse itself. The cost includes the $16 billion that the federal government alone spent on counter-narcotics in 1998. Of that $16 billion, $10.5 billion will be spent on measures to reduce the supply of medicines.
Most of these measures include enforcement measures to stop or intercept the flow of drugs across borders.
