In the last decade of the twentieth century, people in many countries become aware of drug prohibition. In fact, every country in the world has a form of drugs prohibition. However, national drug prohibition started in 1920s in the United States as a subgroup of national alcohol prohibition. In 1930 the congress of United States separated drugs from the alcohol prohibition law and created a new federal drug prohibition agency (Levine, 2002). Prohibition may be defined as the set of policies which ban all production, distribution and sale of drugs for non-medical use. A drug refers to any substance that enters the human body and it is able to change the function or structure of the human organs. The object of this work is to concentrate on drugs as harmful substances, such as heroin. Therefore, this essay presents both the negative and positive effects of drugs on society, people health and politics. Let us begin by looking at the negative effect of drugs on society. Most people believe that drugs should be prohibited until a person is old enough to make a choice about them. However, there are many reasons for prohibiting the use of drugs. Firstly, the drug-user does not have enough information about the harmful effects of his activity. As a result, there are rifts within family members due to the anti-social behaviour of drug-user. In this context, young people find the drug market very attractive as it offers a significant economic incentive to participate in the manufacture, distribution and sale of drugs. Harriman (2005) states that a strong relationship between the drug user and the risk of suicide, for example a man who shot his family members and turned the gun on himself. Indeed, there are significant negative external e... ... middle of paper ... ...cussed the usefulness of drugs prohibition by focusing on the negative and positive effects of drugs on society, people health and politics. Although drug prohibition has been agreed by governments, it has been difficult to enforce. It would also appear that the harmful effect of drugs on society and people health outweighs the positive ones. However, the government should increase awareness among people by providing useful educational programs or building special centers to give people full information related to different types and the negative effects of drugs. Overall, it is the responsibility of governments all over the world to choose the best way to protect their population because they know their situations. They may need to improve and modify drug regulation by applying new legalization on certain drugs may be more effective.
However, before the specific outcomes of Congressional influence and policy impact can be evaluated it becomes important to first review the general history and current situation of drugs today. Our present drug laws were first enacted at the beginning of the century. At the time, recreational use of narcotics was not a major social issue. The first regulatory legislation was for the purpose of standardizing the manufacturing and purity of pharmaceutical products. Shortly after, the first criminal laws were enacted which addressed opium products and cocaine. Although some states had prohibited the recreational use of marijuana, there was no federal criminal legislation until 1937. By contrast, the use of alcohol and its legality was a major social issue in United States in the early 20th century. This temperance movement culminated in the prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933. Recreational drug use, particularly heroin, became more prevalent among the urban poor during the early ?60s. Because of the high cost of heroin and its uncertain purity, its use was associated with crime and frequent overdoses.
It is common knowledge in the United States that Prohibition is a failure. In the 1920’s alcohol was made illegal by the US government during Prohibition. Rather than preventing alcohol consumption, this only created organized crime groups and a black market for the substance. The policy did not only fail to alleviate the US from drug use, but also lead to the formation of organized criminal associations and dangerous substitutes for these drugs. The same issues apply when drugs are made illegal (Thornton 1). Today there is an immense black market
These are the two lines of reasoning I will take to argue against drug prohibition in this paper. After giving a brief history of prohibition, I will show that it is wrong in principal and that there is no moral basis for this policy. I will then show that, regardless of moral considerations, prohibition has not and probably cannot work, and more specifically that the "war on drugs" has been a disaster which should be ended immediately. I will then conclude by discussing possible consequences of legalization.
The war on drugs in our culture is a continuous action that is swiftly lessening our society. This has been going on for roughly 10-15 years and has yet to slow down in any way. Drugs continue to be a problem for the obvious reason that certain people abuse them in a way that can lead to ultimate harm on such a person. These drugs do not just consist of street drugs (marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy), but prescription medications as well. Although there are some instances where drugs are being used by subjects excessively, there has been medical research to prove that some of these drugs have made a successful impact on certain disorders and diseases.
Drug use has been an ongoing problem in our country for decades. The use of drugs has been the topic of many political controversies throughout many years. There has been arguments that are for legalizing drugs and the benefits associated with legalization. Also, there are some who are opposed to legalizing drugs and fear that it will create more problems than solve them. Conservatives and liberals often have different opinions for controversial topics such as “the war on drugs,” but it is necessary to analyze both sides in order to gain a full understanding of their beliefs and to decide in a change in policy is in order.
Drug in the American Society is a book written by Eric Goode. This book, as the title indicates, is about drugs in the American Society. It is especially about the misuse of most drugs, licit or illicit, such us alcohol, marijuana and more. The author wrote this book to give an explanation of the use of different drugs. He wrote a first edition and decided to write this second edition due to critic and also as he mentioned in the preface “there are several reason for these changes. First, the reality of the drug scene has changed substantially in the past dozen or so years. Second much more information has been accumulated about drug use. And third, I’m not the same person I was in 1972.”(vii). The main idea of this book is to inform readers about drugs and their reality. In the book, Goode argued that the effect of a drug is dependent on the societal context in which it is taken. Thus, in one society a particular drug may be a depressant, and in another it may be a stimulant.
While growing up, everyone is told that drugs are bad. That’s why US government declared a war against drugs a long time ago, but still people are using recreational drugs like marijuana and ecstasy. The prohibition against drugs is not working for us. Though we are investing a lot of taxpayers’ money on the DEA, we failed to stop people from taking drugs. Instead more people are dying from overdose or too much use of these drugs. Many people like Russell Brand thinks that legalizing drugs might be able to solve the problem. Though legalizing drugs is working perfectly in Switzerland and Portugal, we should do a lot of research before making any decisions. If the government do decide to legalize drugs, it will have certain impacts on our economy, public health and crime rate.
Drug prohibition was not always accepted as it is today. Indeed, until the early twentieth century, there were few drug laws at all in the United States. Before the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, one could buy heroin at the corner drugstore; even Coca-Cola contained small amounts of cocaine until 1903 (Vallance 4). Some of the most proscribed drugs today were sold like candy and (quite literally) soda pop. What caused the sudden shift to prohibition?
The 1920s was a period of time known as the Prohibition, in which alcohol was outlawed. The reason for this was that alcohol was thought to have created a wide variety of social ills. Workers were less productive, some addicts spent much of their money on fueling their drunkenness, and families were torn apart. In addition, alcohol was known to cause various health problems such as liver failure and sclerosis. The outlawing of alcohol, however, did far more harm than good. Criminal gangs were formed and murder rates soared as crime lords started bootlegging. These issues caused prohibition to be repealed mere years after it was enacted. Following prohibition, it was seen that many people could, in-fact, use alcohol responsibly and in moderation. The prohibition era provides a very relevant lesson for the present day. Drugs are outlawed, and because of this gangs can use them to fund themselves, resulting in a proliferation of violence. The excuses for their outlawing is the same as well: they can cause addiction and health issues if used unwisely. If they were to be legalized, there would be a decline in crime, the prison population, and the amount of funding needed for the police force. The drugs in question which are referred to in this paper illegal ones such as marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, heroin, methamphetamine, morphine, shrooms, and oxycontin. All of these drugs should be legalized and regulated, just as alcohol is today, in order to mend the societal and moral problems caused by outlawing them.
Drug addiction is a chronic which always the brain disease is relapsed that leads to the seeking of compulsive drugs (NIH 2012). Nowadays, drug abuse still is a serious issue for a long time although the government tries to control the drugs by rigorous imprisonment and better education program. Some people cannot understand that why and how people can be a drug addicted person. And the drug users are regarded as the lack of moral principles or willpower (National Institute on Drug Abuse 2012). People think there is no way to reduce the number of the people who take drugs, so drugs should be legalized. Another reason is that the drugs illegal poses threat to society. If the drug is legal, the society would be more peaceful. As far as I am concern,
Drug laws are a highly controversial issue in several countries because there are many arguments for and against the legal prohibition of drugs. The main question that I will be focusing on is: Is the recreational use of illegal drugs, for pleasure or change, morally wrong or morally permissible? In order to analyze the debate over the morality drug use, it is required to take into consideration the various arguments that are established. Mainly arguments about the morality of humans using drugs for recreational use, along with utilitarian arguments over whether legalization or drug prohibition would be an improvement on the drug-related harm in our society. Utilitarianism is a great moral theory to use in evaluating this subject because it can
Drug issue has always been a big issue troubling the whole world and the governments of all countries rack their brains to control drugs. In the past, people definitely held positive attitudes and thought the government should vigorously prohibit drugs and strictly crack down drug-related crimes. But the government’s prohibition of drugs turns out contrary to our expectation that drugs are more abused and the crimes following it also increase year by year. Therefore, people questioned the drug control of the government. “Legalize drugs-all of them” by Baird Vanessa. The author of this article discussed the policies of each country on drugs and the constantly increasing propositions which support the legalization of drugs. In the end of the article, the author also appealed to the American government to promote the legalization of drugs. However, I don’t support the author’s opinion. As far as I am concerned, once drugs are legalized, they will certainly do more harm to the society and the number of drug users will also greatly increase; the legalization of drugs probably can reduce some crimes, but it is not the best way to reduce crime rate; although the legalization of drugs can save the government’s spending on investigating drug smuggling and taxation can also increase the government's incomes, they are far less than the losses brought by the increase of drug users to the society; the legalization of drugs makes the morality of human face severe challenges.
Drugs are something that has been prevalent in our society for many decades now. It seems that as our population continue to grow, drugs seem to continue to have a major impact throughout our society, then used by drug seem to have been influenced by many things, either through social or cultural factors and it have affected people in many different ways such as their behavior, their attitude and just basically their livelihood. Today our society is deeply infected with the issue of drugs, we look around our society and we see young kids are being consume by drugs, we see workers, and executive people are also being consumed by drugs. Drugs continue to play a huge role in our society because while most people
The use of drugs is a controversial topic in society today. In general, addicts show a direct link between taking drugs and suffering from their effects. People abuse drugs for a wide variety of reasons. In most cases, the use of drugs will serve a type of purpose or will give some kind of reward. These reasons for use will differ with different kinds of drugs. Various reasons for using the substance can be pain relief, depression, anxiety and weariness, acceptance into a peer group, religion, and much more. Although reasons for using may vary for each individual, it is known by all that consequences of the abuse do exist. It is only further down the line when the effects of using can be seen.
Addiction and abuse of drugs have remained an unexplainable circumstance, even till today. A mistaken assumption is that drug abusers lack moral principles, and if given a chance or in the presence of will power, their selections could be altered. In reality, drug addiction is known as a complex disease and requires more than will power or mere good intentions to change. Due to the fact that drug addiction could change the way the brain works, with time, the brain promotes compulsive drug abuse. It is difficult to relent even if one is ready to do so. Drug abuse has negative influences not only in the lives of mortals, but also in the society.