YES-Legalization: Panacea or Pandora’s Box
Terms of Policy
There is four different terms used to describe policy for the legal use of drugs. Legalization refers to establishing the open and free market for drugs to people such as adults and making it illegal for minors. Other variations of legalization include government only allowed to sell and produce the drugs and put limits of dosages. Decriminalization is the term used for the removal of criminal penalty for smaller amounts of drugs for personal use. Most common for advocating marijuana. Medicalization is when prescriptions for current illegal drugs prescribe by physicians to addicts on other dependent drugs. The main argument is if providing addicts with drugs to prevent them from committing other crimes to support their habits. The last term is harm reduction, which is the assumption that the government should be focusing on lowering the harm associated with drugs.
Increase of Drug Use & Cost …show more content…
It has been said that the majority of new users, mostly children, will eventually find themselves unable to live without drugs nor be able to function in everyday activities. With the increased use of legalization, money spent on pursing criminal and law enforcement could use for treatment for addicts. In 1995, $13.2 million was spent to fight drug abuse by the government. Besides the cost, the number of prisoners would go down due to drug law violations while costs for health care, schools and businesses will increase. Health care it exceed $30 billion which is considered an amount that may go up after