DRUG POLICY NOT EFFECTIVE IN PREVENTING RELATED CRIME

Legalizing Narcotics Could Provide More Oversight, Regulation On Substances

With today's faltering economy, many people are wondering what can
possibly cure these economic hard times. Besides the obvious need to
cut out some of our billion dollar military budget, the United States
currently spends about $40 billion on the War on Drugs, which many
mayors, police commissioners and others feel has failed.

At the United States Conference of Mayors held in Los Angeles, mayors
of the largest cities in the U.S. said a new plan for the War on
Drugs needs to be drawn up since the current plan is only prolonging
the problem.

From 2000 to 2006, the United States spent $4.7 billion on Plan
Colombia, which is a plan to eradicate cocaine production in
Colombia. At the end of the six-year period, the U.S. Drug Czar's
office said that the overall cultivated acreage was about the same.
No matter how much effort you put into trying to stop the flow of
drugs, there will always be someone else there to fill the void.

If you are to make all drugs legal and keep track of who gets what,
then you have the names of users of certain drugs, which you can try
to help. In doing so you also eliminate the illegal drug distribution
system that is currently in place which in many cases is the
underlying cause to violent crimes. If the product, which was once
illegal, becomes legal then the black market is diminished. Although
there will be an increase in one time users, the United States will
be able to keep records of habitual users.

Another possible option is legalizing marijuana. Then more focus can
be put on reducing the use of substances such as cocaine, heroine and
pharmaceuticals. Nearly 12.6 percent of people who are in jail are
there for marijuana offences. Putting people in jail for marijuana
around real criminals is a waste of money and time for our law
enforcement department. You usually hear marijuana being described as
a "gateway drug," but studies have shown that people who smoke
tobacco are more prone to doing illicit drugs.

You can look at Prohibition in the 1920s, where the initial
implementation of this law made alcohol consumption spike, but toward
the end, people were drinking almost as much and the trend was heading higher.

If our youth was educated properly about the use of drugs rather than
being told they cannot do them, it would save vast amounts of money
and time. Usually when you tell someone they cannot have something,
they are curious as to why, and it creates an underlying want for it.
If we could use the money spent on preventing an unpreventable
problem for better uses, like our education system, all society will benefit.