Legal and illegal drugs are used on a daily basis all over the world. Currently, drugs remain ranked high on the lists of concerns of Americans and are still considered one of the major problems facing our country today. We see stories almost everyday on the news about people being killed in the streets daily over drugs. To most people, drugs are only an inner-city problem, but in reality they affect all of us, people who use and people who don’t use. I believe that the negative effects we associate with drugs would be greatly reduced if the United States adopted a policy towards the total decriminalization of marijuana. The current drug policy of our government is obviously failing. Drug laws create corruption, violence, increased street crime, …show more content…
More serious drugs of abuse, such as cocaine, meth, and heroin, interfere with the brain’s use of dopamine in manners that can seriously alter a person 's behavior. A drug’s ability to affect the neural systems related to dopamine production is now the defining characteristic of drugs that have a serious abuse potential. The main fear about marijuana in today’s time is that its effects are somehow similar to the dangerous, addictive effects of opiates such as heroin and morphine. Marijuana will interfere with the receiving of sensory to the cerebral cortex. Recent research in animals has also suggested that long-term use of marijuana can produce changes in the limbic system that are similar to those that occur after long-term use of other major drugs of abuse such as alcohol, cocaine, and heroin. These changes are most evident when going through withdrawal from THC. During withdrawal, there are increases in the levels of a brain chemicals involved in stress and certain emotions. These same kinds of changes also occur during withdrawal from other drugs of abuse, suggesting there could be a common factor in the development of drug