Persuasive Essay On War On Drugs

A war has been raging on, right under our noses. A war that has hurt many. Millions are in jail or federal prison for one idea. Families have been disrupted under that one idea. Countries have felt the heavy weight of the United States under that same idea. In 1971, President Richard Nixon let loose 40 years of destruction and class separation when he declared this idea. The idea that drug abuse is "public enemy number one"("Thirty Years of America's Drug War"). Although fighting drug abuse is a noble endeavor, interdiction and incarceration are not. In order to solve the issue of mass incarceration brought on by the War on Drugs, we need to change the way we look at drugs and drug abuse: legalizing marijuana, decreasing penalties for drug

Legalization has a lot of pros. First, it would increase regulation and decrease crime. When buying marijuana illegally, a consumer has no idea what the drug is combined with, or has interacted with. This can lead to unexpected results, and dangerous health issues. Synthetic marijuana, a lab created cannabinoid, has been known to cause severe health issues and deaths, and can be rarely told apart from normal cannabis. If the drug is legal, and sold through official distributors, the government can regulate the product and make sure it is safe (“Should Recreational Marijuana Be Legal?”). Second, the marijuana industry would bring money and jobs to the economy through production, packaging, and selling. Marijuana can also be heavily taxed, and rendering pot legal would decrease funding needed for the police force, both bringing more money to the government that can be used for important things like drug education,, and setting up drug rehab centers for those in need (“Should Recreational Marijuana Be Legal?”). We have to treat drug use as a health issue, not as much as a crime (“UNODC Recommends Treating Addiction as Health, Not Legal, Issue.”). Addiction is a mental and health problem, and instead of throwing users in jail we need to put them in treatment programs and centers to help them get