Decriminalization Of Illicit Drugs example essay topic

Forbidden fruit is sweet indeed. Even if the delicacy carries slow and painful death for anyone attracted by its flavor, there " ll always be plenty of those who'd want a little more. Advices, explanations, warnings, restrictions, prohibitions, punishments - nothing can stop this insane thirst for breaking the rules. According to the study of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNO DC) in 2003, "The total number of drug abusers is estimated at some 200 million people, equivalent to 4, 7% of the global population age 15 or above... compared to 4, 3% last year (2002) "; . In 1998 "the international illicit drug business has generated as much as $400 billion in trade according to the United Nations International Drug Control Program. That amounts to 8% of all international trade and is comparable to the annual turnover in textiles", reports web At the meantime "individual drug use or possession of illegal drugs for personal consumption are not amongst the top priorities of European law-enforcement authorities".

All this statistics shows a very simple and obvious fact: you can't stop drug abuse by forbidding it. Every law that you think, makes getting drugs harder, in reality just lowers its quality and raises its price, which leads to more people being infected by HIV or Hepatitis, more bribed police, more killed in drug wars and more funds spent on drug-related law enforcement. Recent charges of 27 cops in Cancun, Mexico, with "running a drug ring or aiding in the murder of their fellow officers"; illustrate "how traffickers continued to infiltrate the area around the Caribbean resort, despite a crackdown following the 2001 arrest of the state's former governor on drug charges". , has reported CNN. com on 03/01/2005. However there is another way: decriminalization of illicit drugs can at least help to make using drugs as safe as possible and even solve some social and racial problems. To tell the truth, not all the laws against drugs have gained approval because of government's concern about the lives of common people.

Desmond Manderson, author of the book "From Mr. Sin to Mr. Big" describes the development of drug laws in Australia. e.g. anti-opium laws in the XIX century were passed to discriminate Chinese from the white Australians:" Opium was seen as a pollutant, moral as well as physical; it was tainted by the environment of its consumption and by its connections with the Chinese themselves". Nowadays racial drug-related prejudices are supported by law enforcement. According to the US federal Household Survey, "most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72% of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15%), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10%) ". Though, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, "of the 246,100 state prison inmates serving time for drug offenses in 2001,139,700 (56.7%) were black, 47,000 (19%) were Hispanic, and 57,300 (23.2%) were white".

Decriminalization of drugs could solve racial problem in no time, as well as to improve social support for drug addicts. Without criminal responsibility for using or possessing drugs legal drug users will be separated from criminal drug dealers. Decriminalization gives control over quality of the drugs thus reducing nearly to zero risk of AIDS and drug-related crimes, as showed the experience of Netherlands. Plus, illicit drugs could become profitable element of national and international trade, like alcohol and cigarettes. Note that "decriminalization" doesn't mean "legalization".

The difference is that decriminalized drugs unlike legalized can't be sold by anyone, government strictly controls all shipments of legal drugs. Thus criminal drug dealers take hits from two sides: on the one hand, they no longer have the power of monopoly on illicit drugs, and on the other, they can still get caught. Decriminalization of drugs also doesn't mean "approval". It is officially permitted to drink alcohol, but common morality condemns drunkards. Almost everyone knows that smoking is harmful, and due to the educational campaigns number of smokers slowly decreases. The same policy should be conducted in case of drugs.

We shouldn't ban drugs, instead we should explain why it's better to live without them and popularize healthy life-style. Those times when people feared drugs abuse problem have passed long ago. It's time to face that problem without the help of guns and jails - they turned out to be useless assistants. How to make the forbidden fruit boring? Allow everyone to taste it.

Bibliography

web Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2001 Annual Report on the State of the Drugs Problem in the European Union (Brussels, Belgium: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2001).
Global Illicit Drug Trends 2003 (UN Office on Drugs and Crime: Vienna, Austria, June 2003), p.
101. Harrison, Paige M. & Allen J. Beck, PhD, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2002 (Washington, DC: US Dept.
of Justice, July 2003), Table 15, p.
10. Manderson, Desmond From Mr Sin to Mr Big Oxford University Press Australia 1993.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Summary Report 1998 (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999), p.
13; Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p.
343, Table 4.10, p. 435, Table 5.48, and p. 505, Table 6.52; Beck, Allen J., Ph. D. and Mu mola, Christopher J., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p.
10, Table 16; Beck, Allen J., PhD, and Paige M. Harrison, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, August 2001), p.
11, Table 16 United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, Economic and Social Consequences of Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking (New York, NY: UNODCCP, 1998), p.