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Classical Argument Essay: The War On Drugs

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Classical Argument Paper
Sean Ewing
11 December, 2016

Over the last few decades, the United States government has waged a “war on drugs.” The goal of this war has been to “…lower drug abuse and addiction and to reduce crime” (Bertram & Sharpe, 1997). This goal was to be achieved primarily by reducing supply (Bertram & Sharpe, 1997). But drug deaths have continued to rise (National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIDA], 2015), as has the number of people in prison for drug-related crimes (The Sentencing Project, 2015). Certainly, as a people we should try to keep deadly drugs like heroin and cocaine out of circulation. But should a non-lethal drug like marijuana be illegal? I propose that this country would be a safer place if the federal government …show more content…

In those states that have already legalized marijuana, either for medical or recreational use, crime has decreased (Morris, TenEyck, Barnes, & Kovandzic, 2014). In fact, “…it may turn out that substituting marijuana for alcohol leads to minor reductions in violent crimes that can be detected at the state level” (Morris et al, 2014).
Mexican drug cartels have lost money because of marijuana legalization in several states (Grillo, 2015). The savage violence perpetrated by drug cartels in Mexico and street gangs in the U. S. is funded, in large part, by the smuggling and sale of illegal drugs in the U. S. (Grillo, 2015). We’ve seen this before during the prohibition era in America: Organized crime grew by smuggling alcohol while it was illegal (Marose, 2012). We shouldn’t keep making the same mistakes.
Another argument in favor of legalization is the positive experience of those states which have already legalized either medical or recreational use of marijuana. As we have already seen, crime has not increased in those states which have legalized marijuana. And incarceration due to drug offenses is down, since pot users are no longer being arrested (Morris et al, 2014). And tax revenue from legal marijuana sales in Colorado, for example, was over $69 million in 2015 (Basu,

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