FREE ESSAY ON AMERICAN DRUG LAWS: DO THEY HELP OR HURT?

AMERICAN DRUG LAWS: DO THEY HELP OR HURT?

American Drug Laws: Do They Help or Hurt?
I believe the drug laws are in serious need of reform. We tend to forget that alcohol is
a drug and that at one time it was prohibited without success. Also, I believe that a
civil body of government rather than a criminal one should regulate drug use. It is a
social problem, not a criminal one. As a largely victimless crime they should not have
their civil rights taken away just because they like to take drugs which we have
arbitrarily made illegal. 
Drugs are very expensive because they are illegal. Their procurement and use fuel crime
and violence, which could be largely eliminated if organized crime did not have a
monopoly and the free enterprise system could control the market. Potency regulated by
licensed drug companies would prevent unusually pure substances from causing accidental
overdose. There is an epidemic of unnecessary deaths from this cause. This problem is
exacerbated by the fear users and bystanders have of seeking a highly effective antidote
for drug poisoning that is universally available at hospitals. The U.S. drug laws violate
our right to privacy, cost millions in tax revenue, overloads the criminal justice
system, and are ineffective as a deterrent to drug use and trafficking. 
Laws that govern drug use are patently arbitrary and have their bases in racial prejudice
and the comfort index of old male legislators. The first opium regulatory laws were
enacted in San Francisco in response to Asian immigrants entertaining married white women
in opium dens (Hamowy).
The American and European tolerance for tobacco and alcohol use while fearing
counter-culture marijuana, cocaine, and heroin is a strong prejudice based on ignorance
of the comparative human misery caused by the inevitable misuse of mind-altering
substances. Alcohol and tobacco cause more illness and death each year than all the
illicit drugs combined. Legislative attempts to curb alcohol and tobacco use by children
makes some of these very vulnerable people desire their use, but the age-restrictive and
the accompanying time-of-purchase limits on widely abused drugs are the best that society
has devised. Our knowledge of education techniques to encourage abstinence or moderate
use of drugs is extremely inadequate.
Laws for prevention of illegal drug use are wildly unsuccessful and have resulted in
making drug-related criminals the majority of incarcerated offenders in U.S. prisons. The
result of illegalizing use, and not necessarily abuse at all, is a 100% increase in drug
criminals in the last ten years (Hamowy) for use of substances which have no more, and
probably less, intrinsic potential for abuse. 
Even if drug laws could be justified morally, they could never be enforced. Since the
demand for drugs will never be eradicated, a network for supplying them to consumers will
always be in place. Short of adopting a system of immediate capital punishment, like the
one used in Singapore, it is impossible to keep buyers and sellers apart. The money to be
made from drug trafficking is so huge that there will always be those willing to risk the
consequences. The desire of the addict for the substance is so great that it will never
be quelled by any amount of legislation. 
Since drug use is potentially a victimless crime we can assume that the drug laws were
created to protect the user from himself. Instead, we punish the victim with
incarceration and without effective rehabilitation. 
If drug offenders were treated by a social or medical governing body, property crimes and
crimes of violence would decrease enormously; and the benefit to society would be
incalculable. Because of a close resemblance of all of the key components in recreational
drugs people use to cerebral endorphins, satiation is always temporary and there is no
inhibiting mechanism to prevent misuse of even toxic amounts. Millions of dollars now
wasted on the Drug War could be redirected into programs to fight poverty, hunger,
medical research, and countless other social programs which would be more valuable to
society. 
If we learned anything from Prohibition it is that people in a free society will not be
controlled, nor should they be. Instead, let us reform the laws to separate drugs by
their risk to society.
Bibliography
WORKS CITED
Hamowy, Ronald. Dealing with Drugs: Consequences of 
Government Control. Pacific Research Institute
for Public Policy: San Francisco. 1987.