Chris Murdoch

Jason Alva
English 2010-013
12/9/15

Intro
This is a highly discussed and debated topic. When we think of
legalizing drugs, tons of different outcomes come to mind. But we need to
think about what kind of drug culture would emerge and what kind of
interaction would take place between the government and the users. when
we give people the ability to make their choice without lawful punishment
being a potential consequence, we've altered the decision making process.
Now people can focus on why they might or might not do certain drugs,
without the law being a factor. We might see less self destructive "throw my
life away" decisions and hopefully more people thinking along the lines of
"okay but will doing heroin really help me get out if this?" It may not be the
first issue on everyone's mind when they're thinking of ways to improve
America, but it's one that needs to be addressed. I actually think this is a big
problem for the country. It is costing us millions of dollars to fight this
needless "war on drugs." It consumes huge numbers of government dollars,
to fuel many efforts to reducing drug use, which does have an impact, but I
think it's not enough. Yes, that money isn't just doing nothing, we pursue
drug dealers and cartels, we try to stop drugs from coming in, and we
investigate users and the economy of all the drug use. We put a lot of effort
and man power into all these methods for corralling drug use in the country,
but it doesn't seem to be enough. And we've seen this before, an era so well
know to American history that we just call it "prohibition." We tried making
one specific substance illegal, just one, and instead of benefits we see
backlash. Of course, alcohol is different than all drugs, it has a long history
with mankind, it's been with us for centuries. But most modern drugs have
been. Alcohol may be mans favorite drink, but it's not the only substance to
have a "buddy" relationship to us as people. Our efforts, and our mentality,
has failed. It's still failing. We not only are looking and approaching this
issue in a way that isn't working and literally never has, but what we're doing
to enforce this flawed mentality is not working. And as I mentioned before,
we can see very real cons from this current situation. We can see the huge

financial cost, we have overcrowded prisons and a high rate of incarceration.

We are hurting the country, and something needs to be done. This concept
is a huge problem for us, but it doesn't need to be, and we need to look at
our other options and viewpoints. Let's talk about Portugal.
Examples of Change

One example we can look at in order to gain some insight, is Portugal.

Pre 2001, Portugal had a drug problem, with nearly 1% of its population was
addicted to heroin. (Alleem, 2015) Then they tried a new method,
completely flipped conventional approaches on their head; they
decriminalized all drugs. I'll talk a little more about it later, but for now,
decriminalization is making an act a non-criminal offense, similar to that of a
traffic ticket, as long as you're not toting bags of drugs, you won't spend time
in jail or see any major discipline. So Portugal decided to go with this
approach. Before changing policies, the country was in what could be called
a crisis. This solved their issue. I looked at a chart with numbers of adults in
Portugal who had used drugs in their life at all, had in the last year, and had
in the last month, all after decriminalizing. The times they took results were
in 2001, 2007, and 2012. The Graph shows how at first, drug use did slightly
increase, but soon the tides turned, and the rates for past month use had
lowered. This is actually amazing, to think that a complete opposite
approach of the logical idea to reducing drug use, and it actually worked.
They also saw a lowered rate of drug induced deaths, not only because of
how they treat addicts, but because they were able to lower rates of HIV
infection spread from needle drugs. This is another benefit I love to see as a
result of changed drug policy, the saving of citizens lives. People may
choose to do hard drugs, but no one wants to die.
Of course another hugely important thing to consider here is the
methods with which this idea was applied. So when someone's is caught
with less than a 10 day supply of drugs, they go through a process involving
health officials and sometimes a small fine, no large emphasis on any kind of
"punishment." The key here to focus on is how they treat addict. They don't
punish someone for making the decisions to use drugs, they try to get them
help with their addiction, they try to find out why they are using such drugs,
a person can refuse, but even if you forced treatment on someone, they
can't change unless they want to anyway. The country stands under a solid
health program for drug abuse and addiction, allowing them to do the best

they can to help drug users in their country. They also expanded their
welfare system to have a guaranteed minimum income. (Alleem, 2015) Of
course there are more factors than just how we treat the addicts. It would be
incorrect to look at Portugal and say that decriminalizing drugs is a surefire
solution to a drug problem, but with the right factors and conditions working
together, it can work. But we must be aware of all the things that are
allowing this to work. They way they treat addicts, the now available money
and resources to go to different causes, our addiction programs, our peoples
income, the strength of the classes, and the education surrounding the
subject. A lot to consider I know, but improving drug policy isn't an easy
thing to do.
Decriminalizing drugs is a unique approach to this issue. When we
change our policy and decriminalize drugs, which makes drug possession not
a criminal offense, we change the relationship our people have with drugs.
The illegal drug trade puts money in a lot places, and sometimes drug
suppliers are not good hands for money to be in. Buying drugs on the illegal
market is dangerous too, many dealers will cut their product, making it more
harmful, dangerous, or addictive. In a situation where they were legalized,
people would be able to see exactly what they're getting, bought in a store.
Although I'm sure obtaining a license to sell hard drugs would be harder
under a decriminalization law, we would see similar benefits. In this system,
the government would really be putting its efforts into helping those drug
users, helping them to escape their drug addictions, we wouldn't just be
letting them get away with drug use, rather we could actively pursue
improving their health. If we help our citizens get better, they'll keep doing
better and the countries people will grow strong and the country will grow
stronger.

A Matter of Principle
"We know, incidentally, that tobacco kills you, but we dont stop people
smoking it, we just make it more and more difficult and tax it. We dont
collect any money from illegal drugs, we just spend an enormous amount of
money trying to stop it and not succeeding. The benefits for society as a
whole of legalizing cannabis, for example would be less aggravation
between those people who think they ought to be able to use cannabis [and
those who don't]. There are groups of people who honestly believe that

cannabis is good for them medicinally. Ive never used illegal drugs myself;
Ive never felt I wanted to. I drink alcohol, but not very much. I dont mind
what other people do, provided they dont harm other people. Its not for
government to say what you shouldnt do if you like doing it." (Michael Allen,
'Meet the British Police Trying To Decriminalize Drugs', 2014)
This is a viewpoint I'd like to talk about, the fact that drug use is a
personal choice. It part of someone's life, a decision they make about their
own body. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's a victimless crime,
sometimes it is, sure. There are many drug users who just get high on their
own time, do their thing, don't harm a soul and still contribute to society, but
some people make bad decisions and end up harming themselves or others.
But the idea here is our personal freedoms, that it's nobody's business what
someone puts into their body. It's hard to defend people who want to shoot
heroin into their veins, or snort a line of coke, but these relate to concepts
our country was founded upon. We started this country to be a land of
freedom and opportunity, privacy is something we definitely have in this
country, it's a part of who we are. I don't like the idea of people killing
themselves with hard drugs, and yet, we let people do that, every day. Why
did we stop fighting alcohol in the 1920's? Nothing was working, and it's the
same thing today. Fighting a lost cause.
An important concept to look at is the legal drugs in our society. The 2
most relevant to us, tobacco and alcohol. These are dangerous drugs,
Tobacco kills hundreds of thousands of people in America every year, and
alcohol plays major roles in rates of violence, car crashes, and many other
forms of harm to the user or these around them. Everyone know this,
everyone knows how bad smoking is for you, and that alcohol kills brain
cells, but people still do them. I think a big part of why this applies to these
drugs specially is because most of the damage is seen later in life. You don't
smoke a cigarette and then wake up in the morning with lung cancer, or
have a stroke. Your liver won't give out after one drink, smoking is said to
shorten your life by roughly 10 years, so a normal lifespan, juts about 10
years shorter, for someone who is totally addicted to nicotine. Yet when
someone is found to be a heroin addict, their new life expectancy from that
point on could be reduced to just a few years. Heroin and cocaine can kill
you on the first time you try them, and if they don't then it would not be
surprising if they did in a few short years, whereas tobacco and nicotine
don't always do that. This makes them seem less dangerous, when really
they kill much larger amounts of users than the hard drugs. When people

don't see them the way they see hard drugs, they are less likely to get
involved in getting past their addictions. We have two of the deadliest drugs
in the world available fro legal sale in this country, it's hypocritical and
nonsensical if nothing else.
But legalization or Decriminalization could make things worse
Now there are those who cast doubt in the things I've been saying.
Those who might say that legalizing drugs would make rates go up, people
would use more, the country would be hurt, the people would be hurt, and
that its just plain wrong to let our people buy drugs and be okay with that.
These are all valid concerns. It makes simple sense, make drugs more
available combined with no real punishment, yea, many people could start
using drugs or start suing them more, that's a very plausible outcome. But
there's more to it than that, that's not where this discussion ends. The whole
point is to shift our efforts, not abandon them. If we legalize, then drug use
will change for the better, people will know what they're getting, no violence
will happen in the actual drug purchase by the user, and they will use it in
safer ways (such as using clean needles, stopping spread of disease.) At
first, Portugal did see a rise in drug abuse, I mean, of course they did. It's
not supposed to just work like magic, and because drugs are no longer a
criminal offense the people will just suddenly realize how bad drugs are. This
whole thing is an effort switch, using a new tactic based on helping the
people to grow stronger resulting in the people improving and thusly making
themselves stronger. That's the idea here. They might think we just want to
make drugs legal or no big deal and then poof the governments done its job
there ya go. No. The government needs a proper role, helping drug addicts,
not punishing them at a high cost. If drugs would be legal or decriminalized,
people may or may not start using more, meanwhile we take that extra
money from all the incarcerations that aren't happening and people being
paid to track drug users, and we put into social causes. We offer help to
addicts, we educate people about these drugs and educate them on why
people use drugs. Although as we saw with Portugal, it would appear this is
not enough by itself. Many of the risk factors for drug use are associated
with lifestyle conditions. People who are in poverty or who have mental
illnesses, and these factors need attention too. Which we could supply, in
the way of making an effort to improve our citizens lives. If we are able to
help people to live a little better, we can seriously cut back on rates of
people abusing drugs. It's not just legalizing or decriminalizing, its reforming
our people, and only doing what's positive for their lives.

Conclusion
So let's recap a little. We looked at Portugal, a nation in need of help.
They had a serious problem on their hands, so they tried something new and
made possession of all drugs pretty much nothing in the eyes of the law.
What happened? improved rates of drug abuse and other negative statistics
associated with drug abuse. We can look at why they were successful too,
because the same trick won't work fro every society in every condition. We
see how important the governments relationship with its people is. This is
something our current policy is totally dropping the ball on, we look to punish
our drug offenders, we offer help but not like in the way we would in a
decriminalized system. If we decriminalized or legalized drugs, treatment
would be an encouraged option, not a symptom of the offenders penalty.
Before breaking these two down a little more, let's not forget a moral
principle riding on the side of this whole discussion. That regardless of
whether legalizing or decriminalizing drugs would help (sometimes it will
sometimes it won't) that this type of behavior should be a reserved right of
our citizens, we let people smoke and drink and that's possibly more
dangerous than any other hard drug. Proving that this current policy is both
inconsistent and ineffective. Now, I've explained the difference between
legalization and decriminalization, where with legalization you get full
government backing, and decriminalization kind've just shifts how we treat
"offenders." I believe decriminalization has a higher potential to work for a
country like America, where our citizens will be given support and proper
care for their drug problems. But it will still lessen drugs strength in the
black market and the government will still inform people of the damage
caused by drugs, so we can start working on bettering our citizens, without
supporting drug use in any way. It's time we changed the way we try to help
people, because right now our efforts are worthless.

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