Decriminalizing Drugs Analysis

744 Words3 Pages

To approach the war on drugs in the United States is quite a challenge. Our political system cannot agree on providing universal health care, decent education, and stable retirement to its citizens, and do begin addressing the problem of drugs seems impossible. Likewise, one out of twenty-eight children has an incarcerated parent, meaning that those children are more likely to struggle in life because of the psychological and emotional effects. Therefore, drug policies need to be reformed because millions of people fall to be victims of those racist and sexist laws that only serve to perpetuate inequalities and injustices. One of the primary goals of the drug reforms should focus on decriminalizing drugs. Hari, in the Chasing the Scream: …show more content…

Likewise, Hari (2013) argued that opiates in pure form do not damage the organs or flesh. Therefore, people are capable of using low doses of pure opiates and can be productive in the workforce. However, with decriminalizing drugs comes another issue of who will be producing drugs. In the present day, pharmaceutical companies are big money businesses that only care about profits and not the health of the people. Similarly, Hari (2013) illustrates how big pharmaceutical companies essentially are drug lords in the context of prescription painkillers, such as Vicodin or Oxycontin. Thus, to suggest the decriminalization of drugs is easy, but harm to accomplish, likewise, to declaring war on pharmaceutical companies is essential as declaring the war on the middle class because they are the primary users. Likewise, the minority groups are primary victims of the drug policies because they are aimed at disproportionally targeting minority groups. Therefore, since we live in capitalistic …show more content…

When you have a strong government who represents the people and is interested in addressing the social issues, then we can begin to solve problems in our culture. However, for real democracy to happen, we need to have educated people who are invested in the collective nationalism and not the virtue of individualism. Likewise, to address the problem, we need to start with educating the future generation to be politically and civically engaged. Democracy is simple meaning it is to the people, by the people, and for the people. If we want to change then, we need to hold our politicians accountable for everything they do. Likewise, we are the people who elect our representatives, and in the present day, we as citizens have failed on all possible levels of our civic responsibilities. Thus, if somehow, one day, our political system will be something like Social Democracy, then we can begin address those issues because then those issues will be expressed on as a collective struggles viruses individual flaws. We, as people, should see the social wealth net as something positive that benefits our society, and not as government robbing us through taxation. It is very easy to suggest rehabilitation clinics and drug awareness, but it just will not happen in our times because our government just will not do it. For example, 9/11 responders are fighting to get the Zadroga Act passed, which funds