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Examples Of A Modest Proposal For Legalizing Drugs

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Inasse Slaoui Bernadette Varela AP English Language 23 February 2023 A Modest Proposal: For preventing drug abuse and overcrowding in prison the United States of America must legalize all drugs. The War on Drugs was declared by the United States in 1973, and like the similarly unsuccessful War on Terror, it was riddled with inconsistencies and hampered by irrational policy goals. Forty plus years and a trillion dollars later, the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world and a racist two-tiered judicial system under which teenaged blacks caught with a few crack rocks do hard time in state prisons, while the bankers who launder the Mexican cocaine cartel’s blood-stained billions simply pay fines. The very meaning of unpatriotism …show more content…

Proponents of drug legalization, such as myself, argue that it could have a number of societal benefits. For one thing, it may help to reduce the number of weak addicts by making drugs more widely available and less valuable. As a result, employers would no longer have to worry about hiring people with drug addictions, potentially leading to a more competitive job market. Furthermore, legalization might contribute to economic growth by generating new jobs in the drug industry and money through taxes and regulations. Because more goods are being sold, the economy will benefit from more drugs being sold and becoming widely accessible. Despite the fact that they are currently illegal, drugs are still sold, but because they are legal, their exports do not benefit the American economy. In order to participate in the billion dollar drug trading industry, we would therefore need to legalize drugs in order to support the American …show more content…

There are currently laws against drug distributors being held criminally liable for overdose homicides. These laws, which are supposed to target major drug traffickers, are actually making it possible to prosecute friends, family members, partners in relationships, and co-users of overdose victims. In six years, from 363 reported prosecutions in 2011 to 1,178 in 2016, the number of people accused of or prosecuted for drug-induced homicide increased by more than 300 percent, according to a 2017 report by the Drug Policy Alliance. According to the Health in Justice Action Lab, by 2019, there were 26 new and expanded laws that reclassified overdose as homicide, murder, or manslaughter. These laws increase the number of overdoses because people are afraid of being charged with manslaughter; however, by legalizing all drugs, those who do unfortunately overdose will be more likely to be rescued before

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In a 1970 article about drugs, narcotics, and the government, “Drugs: Case for Legalizing Marijuana”, Gore Vidal explores how the illegalization of marijuana has created the opposite effect of what the legislation has intended to do. Vidal’s explanation and reasoning behind this idea is not entirely associated with drug users and the population in general, but also has a strong link to monetary gains in government bureaus and large-scale mafias. These financial motive claims are supported by logical appeal and evidence.1 To begin, Vidal points out that, “both the Bureau of Narcotics and the Mafia want strong laws against the sale and use of drugs because if drugs are sold at cost there would be no money in it for anyone” (par. 10). This statement

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Randy E. Bartnett claims that “drug laws cause more harm to addicts and society than drugs themselves.” According to Bartnett, “Drug prohibition makes drugs so expensive, the addicts trying to crime in order to obtain money to buy them. Furthermore, drug prohibition is unfair in that it punishes users for committing a “crime” that has no victim.” Some people might agree with the idea that legalizing drugs would benefit addicts because then they would not be able to obtain drugs so easily.

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If there was an open market for drugs and Americans’ were educated on the effects drugs can have on their bodies, the monopoly for drugs would rapidly decrease. Drugs are outlawed in America yet prohibition has never been successful in America. Anytime the government has tried to stop the distribution of a substance people have always jumped at the chance to make

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In An Open Letter To Bill Bennett, Friedman is pleading with Bennett to rethink the system of the War on Drugs and consider how effective it has truly been when observing the persistent drug issue not only in America but also how the illegality of drugs has influenced the devastation of other countries within the drug supply. In this letter, Friedman agrees with Bennett on the importance of drug regulation and understands the moral, health, and safety dilemmas that drug use places on society. However, Friedman believes that the way that America is addressing the drug problem is not the correct method and is instead a large source of the increasing drug issue in America. In the letter, Friedman discusses the demand for drugs having to operate through restricted and illegal channels only causes more harm through violent crime, increased arrests and incarceration rates for non-violent drug users, and takes the efforts and focus of law enforcement away from other serious crimes. Further, Friedman pleads with Bennett to address the issues plaguing the prohibition of drugs by appealing to the restrictions of human liberty and individual freedom that are supposed to be guaranteed and offers a solution that focuses on rehabilitation instead of punishment of drug users.

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But if the government wants to help drug addicts, they must not only provide drug addicts with medical services, but also provide them with housing and jobs that can sustain them. These methods are not only expensive, but may also affect the overall American society, because providing jobs for these people means that some normal people will lose their job

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In 1970, President Richard Nixon, in response to the drug use coupled with the hippie counterculture of the late 1960s, signed the Controlled Substance Act (CSA) which enacted a method of classifying drugs by categorizing them into five schedules, schedule one considered to be the most dangerous. Shortly following this act, in June of 1971, Nixon declared “The War On Drugs”, famously naming drugs and drug abuse “Public enemy number one”. (History.com, 2016). Following Nixon’s presidency, many presidents and administrations, including Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, have continued the support for The War on Drugs, but where are the results? It seems today that the abuse of drugs is worse than ever before.

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Aaleyah Patterson Tom Scales U.S. Public Policy & Democracy 10 March 2016 The “War On Drugs” Is A Public Policy Failure Here we are, four decades after Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971 and $1 trillion spent since then. What do we have to show for it? Externalities that were unforeseen.

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Introduction Drugs (legal and illegal) have been a part of the human experience all around the world. About a century ago, the United States declared a war on drugs, trying to control production, distribution, and consumption of illegal substances. According to CQ Research, “an estimated 22 million Americans are dependent on or abusing drugs or alcohol, at huge costs to society. Deaths from overdoses due to heroin and other opioids, including the prescription painkillers OxyContin and Vicodin, are on the rise, with many parts of the country fighting what U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has called a public health crisis” (Chronology, pg. 1).

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For example, agencies have been established with the sole intent to manage drug use and distribution and technology has been exclusively developed to detect the presence of drugs. Yet, evidence has indicated that such exhaustive efforts have been relatively unsuccessful. First, it has been assumed that drugs have perpetuated violence in society and based on this rationale, it was believed that by the suppressing the pervasiveness of drugs that incidents of violence would simultaneously diminish. However, reality has failed to align with the expectations that had initially been anticipated. Research findings have suggested that the decriminalization of drugs would result in a less adversarial drug market in which conflicts have tended to arise among dealers as well as between dealers and buyers (Common Sense for Drug Policy, 2007, p. 21).

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The financial costs of illicit drug use can be roughly measured by how much the government spend on law enforcement and the loss of human productivity. Globally the world spends $100 billion annually on law enforcement aimed in an effort to enforce, prevent, treat, and reduce harm caused by illegal drugs. Despite all the money spent on the interdiction of illegal drugs, drug markets continue to rise and expand. Law enforcement provides very poor value for money that should instead be allocated for education, public infrastructure or in the form of lower taxes. Additionally, drug use causes loss in human productivity which is bad for the economy.

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First, it could eliminate the black market and related criminal activities, it might lessen drug-related crime and violence. Legalizing drugs may also lessen the demand on the criminal justice system and the number of people who are imprisoned for drug-related offenses. Opponents of legalizing drugs argue that this could increase drug use and addiction, as well as related health and social issues. There are worries that making drugs legal could encourage drug use among young people in particular and contribute to the normalization of drug use in society. Additionally, there are worries that drug companies can place profits ahead of public health and that drug advertisements could open up new markets for illegal

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946 Words | 4 Pages

This paper argues that the “War on Drugs” and the current enforcement and punishment approach is not working. The results of our policies are the mass incarceration of individuals, especially blacks and Latinos. Drug experts and historians identified two main eras of the war on drugs, the 1970s’ and 1980’s, two main turning points of U.S. policy in combating drugs. The first major shift in drug policy was started by the Nixon Administration. Nixon was sworn in as the 37th President of the United States on 20 January 1969 and by July of 1969 his administration submits legislation for a comprehensive reform of federal drug enforcement laws.

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As a result of the war on drugs, our prison population and overall cost of incarceration has increased exponentially. Nancy Reagan, former first lady and widow of President Ronald Reagan, advocated for the “Just Say No Campaign”, treating drug use as a criminal offense rather than a health issue. After Richard Nixon officially launched the drug war in 1971, the amount of incarcerated within the United States multiplied from “50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997” (A Brief History of the Drug War). People began to become full time prisoners due to small criminal offenses, such as possession of a small quantity of drugs. The exponential growth of the amount of inmates also means and exponential growth in the amount of money being spent on prisons amongst other programs.

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It benefits terrorist groups, causes high amount of deaths every year, and causes many people to be thrown in jail. It affects individuals because those who use the illegal substances have a chance of dying and those

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The legalization of marijuana would create an increase in jobs because it will create a new industry. It can create many businesses related to marijuana such as spas, textiles, paper, marijuana dispensaries, and many others. All of these will help boost the economy. The only reason it was banned was because of a man named William Randolph Hearst wanted to eliminate a textile competitor because he was using hemp to create his textiles. Hearst was big in the media so he launched a marijuana prohibition movement and later got marijuana banned in Congress.

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