Drug War

Drugs are such a controversy and people have such strong opinions about whether they should be legal or illegal. I don't have a strong opinion on this topic; I'm easily swayed. For the most part though, I think that they should be legalized because people do it anyways and if they were legal the government could regulate their use and sale more, the government should be receiving the profits of the drug business rather than dealers, marijuana has most of the same effects as cigarettes, and it's been proven over and over how prohibition doesn't seem to work.

Each year, the government wastes $20 billion dollars on the war against drugs, but it doesn't seem to do any good (Liberty For All, online magazine). Marijuana is the number one cash crop in the United States so it makes sense that the government receives at least the taxes off of this industry. The estimated value of U.S. marijuana crop is $32 Billion dollars. Think of how useful all that money would be to the government. I don't see how it matters how we get the money.

Another argument for the legalization of drugs is that by having government control than all drugs would be safer. We could have specialized farmers growing cannabis and chemists mixing other chemicals to make drugs. The government would be able to manage how much of each drug is out in the United States and they can regulate so much more. I don't think any of this will make it easier to obtain and I think people will still be looked down upon if they are a heavy drug user, just like heavy smokers or heavy drinkers.

The most important thing for me is that people do it anyways; they always have and most likely always will. "Drug prohibition has not stopped 30 million people from trying cocaine and 60 million people from trying marijuana. Prohibition also has not stopped the number of heroin users from increasing by 150% and the number of cocaine users from increasing by 10,000%. Moreover, prohibition has not kept drugs out of the hands of children: in 1988 54% of high school seniors admitted to having tried illicit drugs; 88% said it was fairly easy or very easy to obtain marijuana: and 54% said the same about cocaine" (Boaz 229). Nobody can