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Pro Drug Prohibition Essay

657 Words3 Pages

Drug prohibition, is a term rarely attached with a negative connotation for many Americans. Its failure has sparked some debate in the last fifty years, however, the ignorance about illegal substances has led to little discussion on alternatives. Legalizing all drugs is a better alternative than perpetuating the failed war on drugs.
Alcohol prohibition has given us the opportunity to see the transformation of a once illegal drug become a legal and regulated substance. The 18th amendment of the constitution made alcohol consumption, distribution, and production illegal. The birth of a criminal industry was subsequently created. Prohibition fostered the growth of powerful criminal organizations that would have never …show more content…

If the common notion is true that addiction is a disease, then why are we putting the ill in jail cells? If an individual was caught abusing alcohol, AA or a fine would be the solution. Now, let's change the substance to heroin, a drug that if caught with can carry a sentence of up to two years in prison. The difference between the two drugs in the eyes of the law is one is legal while the other is not but, both of these substances can lead to addiction and death if abused. So, according to the law a heroine addict should be put in prison while an alcoholic deserves only substance abuse counseling. The heroin addict now has a criminal record because his biggest mistake was choosing to abuse the wrong substance. The alcoholic also has the advantage of leaving the convicted felon box on applications unchecked while his counterpart does not have this luxury. The drug war has created a system where a convicted drug offender is sent to a correctional facility to fix his ways, but, once the convicts term is served they are asked to assimilate back into a society which demonizes them. Criminal organizations have contributed to this persecution, however their existence has brought about an even more sinister and corrupt

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Prohibition created organized crime groups. It took substantial organization to bootleg the extents of the alcohol people wanted. Prohibition became a failed attempt at constituting morality. Organized crime deals a lot with influence and money. People of law enforcement and politics were bribed and blackmailed.

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Instead of lowering crimes, prohibition led to a rise of organized crime. Prohibition was hard to enforce. People turned to bootlegged alcohol , the bootlegging turned into avery lucrative business as American continued to want their alcohol. Alcohol sales were controlled by street gangs and the mafia. The illegal liquor sales brought in huge profits to the gangs selling.

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Most people obeyed the law; after Prohibition was enacted, deaths from liver cirrhosis did notably decrease. However, the path chosen to protect women and children from alcoholic husbands and fathers was too tricky. The alcohol sold on the black market was unregulated and sold at high prices, it was made more potent and dangerous. Organized crime ascended and prospered because of the new market the 18th Amendment created. The national government was called to try to stop people from their alcoholic tendencies, but the national government should not have to look at local or domestic problems such as these.

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More than a decade ago, the passing of the 18th Amendment banned the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol. Now that this law has been repealed, did it fulfill its purpose and solve any problems of America? Even before the 18th Amendment went into effect in January of 1920, many Americans were in support of Prohibition. Supporters wanted America to be a healthier, safer, and more moral country.

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Prohibition: Why Did America Change Its Mind? Al Capone once said “ Prohibition has done nothing but trouble”. Ending the manufacture and transport of alcohol will only make situations worse. After the 18th Amendment was passed, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the U.S. was illegal.

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Blocker, Jack S., Jr. “Did Prohibition Really Work? Alcohol Prohibition as a Public Health Innovation.” American Journal of Public Health.

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It makes no particular sense for an amendment to ban the means of acquiring a product, but not the product’s actual consumption. This, in turn, creates confusion and a sort of gray area between legal and illegal. Accordingly, Kyvig notes that doctors and pharmacists were able to legally prescribe alcohol, which was a significant (and frequently exploited) loophole. The malleability of the 18th amendment is a significant part of what made it a failure. This brings to mind the topic of social class.

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Prohibition led to the rise of organized crime and failed as a policy due to many loopholes and large numbers of corrupt officials. Though started with good intentions it was not a good policy because it destroyed jobs and attempted to destroy an industry. These reasons lead to Prohibition’s failure and the repealing of the 18th Amendment in

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In the 1970s the United States entered the era known as mass incarceration, the byproduct of the drug war. The War on Drugs changed how society handled drug dependency, diverting the problem from public health to criminal justice. Since the Nixon administration, the political stance on being tough on crime has resulted in various laws and policing practices that heavily criminalized drugs to point in which the prison population in the United States increased from 300,000 people in 1972 to 2.3 million today (Barish, DuVernay, Averick & DuVernay, 2016). The epidemic of mass incarceration corresponds to a variety of public health issues such as mental illness, increased violence within society, increased incidence of addictions, and increased incidence of chronic illnesses (Drucker, 2013).

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Introduction: Attention getter: according to ohio.gov, over 4,000 people died of drug overdose in 2016. Relevance: drug abuse is a growing epidemic especially here in Ohio, which is ranked 2nd worst overdose rates in the united states. Credibility: multiple of my family members have been addicted to drugs and i have first hand experience of how drug abuse can affect someone's life, and how rehab affects people addicted to drugs vs how prison affects people addicted to drugs. Thesis & Preview: as a result of the growing drug epidemic in the United States, thousands die every year. There are many proposed solutions for this problem such as decriminalization, rehab, prison, and even the death penalty.

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“Alcohol was seen as the devil’s advocate and banning the substance would help improve the quality of American lives. It caused an explosive growth in crime with more than double the amount of illegal bars and saloons operating than before prohibition.” (Nash, “Organized”). The Eighteenth Amendment was passed with the goal of prohibiting the sale, consumption, and use of alcohol. The Volstead Act was passed to further enhance this Amendment, yet it led to  numerous amount of problems such as an increase in organized crime, rise of speakeasies, and health problems.

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President Ronald Reagan's "War on Drugs" policy in the early 1970s resulted in an increase in incarceration rates and had a negative impact on minority communities. However, drug policies have since changed with a focus on decriminalization and legalization. These new approaches aim to address mass incarceration caused by drug-related offenses through new strategies for addressing drug abuse and dealing. Drug decriminalization allows society to explore different approaches for solving crimes related to drugs while also promoting public health, reducing stigmatization, and establishing treatment programs. In contrast, drug legalization presents another solution that seeks to eliminate the black market and cartels by regulating the sale of

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To begin, in 2009, the epidemiologist Jacques Baillargeon of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston alongside his colleagues, described this situation as a “national public health crisis.” The group describes that everything started in the 1960s, thanks to the antipsychotic medication which led to a movement of closing various psychiatric hospitals to an extent. The now-closed institutions were supposed to be replaced by a close-by community facility, and the health insurance you had was supposed to cover mental health treatment, but the failure to ensure both led to the war-on-drugs that began in the 1980s. The war on drugs led to increased drug arrests, and led to mandatory and fixed sentences. Sadly, but no surprise, more offenders that were on drugs were wrongly incarcerated for many years, this due to failure from the government to protect them.

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This leads to the question of whether the justice system is doing an adequate job of dealing with drug addiction. Instead of incarcerating people for drug abuse, an alternative is treating victims by rehab and treatment. This paper will exam why treatment is the superior option for

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Prohibition on certain drugs may prevent a certain number of people from taking drugs, but in the process, it is causing huge damage to society as a whole. For instance, prohibition actually makes drugs stronger. It was the same during alcohol prohibition, which led to an increased consumption of strong liquor over beer. Just think of how many criminal organizations that exist which depend on the sale of illegal drugs. If the government made all illegal drugs legal for recreational use for adults all those criminal organizations wouldn’t exist because they wouldn’t be making any money.

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