Essay On Drug Legalization

1412 Words6 Pages

The drugs legalization, and its influence on economy

Introduction

The war on drugs has been an endless fight, the best example that we know is probably is the U.S.A, where it has created overcrowding in prisons and a violent drug war between Mexican cartels, American gangs and the police, with a terrific result of approximately 70’000 people killed between 2006 and 2010, the majority not working for the drug trafficking.

Economically speaking, the illegal drugs market makes up 1% of global GDP and is estimated around $400 billion a year (Office des Nations unies contre la drogue et le crime, 2005). Furthermore drug traffic has led whole countries under the corrupting influence of drug cartels, hindering any kind of control from the authorities, …show more content…

The first question is the how quantify the potential expenses. Although economists have suggested various methods for quantifying them such as estimate the value of a life, the cost of a death or even the cost for a treatment, these methods are not as easy to use as they sometimes are presented, and are depending on too much specifics factors to be applied as a generality.

The most relevant figures about the potential issues involved by drug legalization is “Drug induced crimes” which means, crimes related to people under the influence of drugs. According to a study from Carson, E.A & Sabol, W.J. (2012), on local jail inmates, “ 15.4% of them have been tested positive for illegal drugs and an additional 12.1 % has been tested positive for a combination of illegal drugs and alcohol.”
US Department of Justice states, “Criminals commit six times more homicides, four times assaults, and almost one and a half times as many robberies under the influence of drugs.”(Carson, E.A & Sabol, W.J., 2012). This statistics shows us that often drugs contributed to the act of violence and irrationality in committing crimes. If drugs were legalized, there could be then a higher possibility for having more people in society committing crimes. Therefore, legalizing drugs could maybe increase addiction and number of consumers and by this way increase drug-induced