With legalization all or most drug laws would be repealed or changed. With this type of law the United States would go back to pre-Harrison Act drug policy or close to it. A suggestion for just repealing some laws would be to repeal the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. If this law was repealed, then “hard drugs” would still be illegal, but marijuana would be legal. Legalization of marijuana is of popular belief and many people believe it should be the new law because of the wasted money the government spends on enforcing anti-drug laws unsuccessfully. America spends thirty billion dollars enforcing the laws even though millions of Americans are using drugs without getting caught. Legalizing marijuana would save the American government and citizens money. Keeping one person in jail for life costs the citizens at least twenty thousand dollars a year. By the end of the tenth year that person is in prison the money could have paid for five collage students education’s, thousands of school lunches, and a countless amount of vaccinations (Cornell Smithers Report). Not only is legalization a popular belief it would save government money.
Another reason marijuana should be legal is because if a society supports personal freedom, as the United States does, then the law can be appropriate for enforcing certain types of morality and support the right to be different. We outlawed drugs to help the society and its what the moral view was. Now that the outlaw is unsuccessful and the moral view is changing we should legislate morality (Miller 126).
Self-control is inconsistent with capitalism. Self Control is needed to control the temptations of drugs through society: with the American capitalist system self control should not be needed. Drugs fit in well with this system as an expensive technological quick fix for psychic troubles. “Anti drug laws run against a basic national trait as they try to protect American citizens from temptation” (Miller 126).
Legalization is a good idea because the reason illicit drugs are considered immoral is not because they are harmful. They are considered
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immoral because users feel better than usual and they experience pleasure. Many other substances that are harmful are legal such as alcohol and tobacco. Although many people consider marijuana immoral there are plenty of citizens that indulge in the activity making the drug criminalizing it in a free society is questionable or even undemocratic (Miller 126).
Some advocates for legalizing marijuana claim that one major reason why the government is not legalizing marijuana is because they would have to admit fault. This would be hard for major government officials who have been brutalizing drug users for so long. Most people believe the government should just admit to the error and hinder their pride because we are all sinners and even though guilty there is no shame unless error persists after it has been recognized (Miller 127).
Another important aspect to consider in drug legalization is the social turmoil that is caused when a behavior. like using marijuana, is approved by much of society is a criminalized behavior. When the government gets tougher with laws the trouble gets worse. The answer, many say, is to let it go. They do not mean give into drugs they mean to recognize anti-drug laws are inappropriate because of the increased problems they cause (Miller 127-128).
Another argument to marijuana legalization is that the widespread violation of law changes its purpose. Due to the millions of law violations in this area the law is no more directed against the problem
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it is enforced to assert the power of the state. The punishment associated with the violation of law is now associated with rebels instead of drug addicts or even drug users. Wide spread violation of laws indicate that the law indicate that the law violates social contract (Miller 128).
Some argue marijuana should not be legal because the drug can not only harm themselves but also others. The argument against this that advocates for legalizing have is that life in general can be harmful. Everyday actions risk harm on others. Risk is inherent to life and citizens can not be held accountable for being alive. Risks are something needed in a free society without them it would not be free. In a free society, people also have the right to ruin their lives, if they so choose to do so they should have the ability and freedom to do so legally. Without these abilities citizens are not free (Miller 127-128).
There is a long history of using drugs legally and also years of watching the freedom to use drugs slip into what some of society believes to be immoral therefore, drugs became illegal. The government has made several anti-drug laws, has spent trillions of dollars and came up with several ways to try and stop drug use. Although the government has come up with these ideas to break society of abusing drugs but statistics to show these tactics have been unsuccessful. Marijuana is the most widely and accepted illicit drug with eighty million Americans
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trying it. With the rising numbers in both drug use and the amount of money spent on enforcing drug laws the government needs a approach. The most popular idea is legalization. If legalization occurs government spending would go down and drug crime would also decrease with it. “Any drug can be used successfully, no matter how accepted it is. There are no good or bad drugs: there are only god and bad relationships with drugs” (Inciardi 24). If the government teaches good relationships with drugs through drug education, I believe, legalization is the key to successful drug laws.
Bibliography
Bureau of Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1996, Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office (1997), pgs. 4, 502
Federal Bureau Of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports 1996. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office (1997), p. 62 Table 1
Hall, W., Room, R. & Bondy, S., WHO project on Health Implications of Cannabis Use: A comparative Appraisal of the Health and Psychological Consequences of Alcohol, Cannabis, Nicotine and
Inciardi, James A. and Arnold S. Trebach. Legalize It?. Washington, D.C.: The American University Press, 1993.
Marihuana Tax Act of 1937; Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (1997).
Miller, Richard Lawrence. The Case For Legalizing Drugs. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991.
ONDCP Project Know- Know it all about Marijuana. http://www.projectknow.com
Scholosser, Eric. “Reefer Madness.” Atlantic Monthly Aug. 1994: 40-49.
Terkel, Susan Neiburg. The Drug Laws: A time for a change?. New York: Franklin Watts, 1997.
United States. The National Drug Control Strategy, 1998. Washington, D.C., 1998.
U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Washington: GPO, 1991.