In today’s day and age, our government has just barely given into the legalization of marijuana, and only one state has gone as far as to decriminalizing another drug. Knowing this, you may think it is completely wack to propose the idea that all drugs should be legal or at least be decriminalized in the US. But after you look at the reasoning’s behind this, it starts to make a lot more sense. If other drugs besides marijuana were legalized, we would have more money as a country to spend on other issues, and there would be less addiction, overdoses, and cases of HIV/AIDS.
The first thing that makes legalizing all drugs sound irrational is the simple fact that this will just cause more people to do drugs and kill themselves. Although, this has actually been proven false. In 2000, Portugal decided to legalize all drugs and release all its prisoners that were being kept due to drug related charges. Decades of evidence from around Portugal has shown that reducing and eliminating criminal penalties for drug possession does not increase rates of drug use or crime – while drastically reduces addiction, overdose and HIV/AIDS. After Singapore took these drastic steps, the opioid crisis stabilized. They saw dramatic drops in drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, deaths by overdose, drug-related crimes and incarceration rates. HIV infections were at an all time high in 2000 at 104.2 per million. After all drugs were legalized, the infections dropped to 4.2 per every million by 2015. One of the biggest problems with drugs in the US is that people are afraid to get help because they are afraid of the trouble they might face with the law. This also applies to the scene of an overdose when witnesses are hesitant to call for help because they are scared of the punishments that come with it. Some efforts are being put forward to create laws that protect the witnesses at the scene of an overdose, when they would normally be punished by the law for whatever drug-related charge they would normally be given. After this bill was passed in Singapore, many people began to open up about their addictions and receive help, risk-free from the law. If we were able to pass a bill like this in the US, we would also be helping prevent many overdoses due to drugs being laced with chemicals much more dangerous than the intended drug. Places would be provided where people struggling with addiction would be able to go, knowing that the drugs they want is what they’re getting.
Our second biggest problem currently is the large amounts of money that we are wasting on the drug war. More than 1 million people are arrested in the US each year for drug possession, yet it has done nothing to reduce the availability or the harm they cause. We are spending billions of dollars on incarcerating these “criminals”, when we could be putting this money towards other issues in our country. Half of all adults in the U.S. have used an illegal drug at some point. Imagine if someone close to you lost the right to their freedom for making a choice that harms no one but themselves. If this was someone you loved such as a family member or friend, would they deserve to be arrested, jailed, and face a lifetime of punishment? When you put it in that perspective it truly doesn’t seem fair at all. This is not to mention the fact that drugs arrests have always fueled institutionalized racism. Although white and non-white Americans’ drug use is very similar, African Americans and other minorities are arrested and imprisoned at higher rates. For example, according to government estimates only 12 percent of drug users in the United States are black, but nearly 40 percent of those arrested for drug offenses are black. Also, there are at least 133,000 currently incarcerated for drug possession, while 63,000 of these people are held pre-trial, simply because they’re too poor to post bail. All the money that we put into our prisons to maintain the lives of its criminals could be put to way better use in our country.
Other than the fact that legalizing all drugs would help reduce the amount of overdoses in the US, lower the rate that HIV/AIDS is spread drastically, while saving money and maintaining the same exposure to these drugs as a whole, I believe that the most important reason for making this decision is simply that people who wish to consume more dangerous drugs than marijuana or alcohol should have the liberty and well-being to make the decision for themselves. In the land of the free, we as individuals are supposed to be given the choice to make our own, whether it is in our own best interest or not, not the governments.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/4-reasons-why-us-needs-decriminalize-drugs-and-why-were-closer-you-think
https://www.aclu.org/other/against-drug-prohibition
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugs-policy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it