Drug Legalization: Yes or No
Gregor Podjed
“The War on Drugs” started when the US president Richard Nixon declared drugs the “public enemy number one” in 1971. The goal of this is quite noble, aiming to prevent people from getting addicted to drugs, but it instead caused more bad than good. The criminalization of some drugs is even enforced through UN drug treaties, which are in use by almost all UN members. The war on drugs just made it harder for addicts to reach out and get help. If drugs were legal, governments could regulate how many addictive substances they contain or how they are sold. In 2023, the annual US federal drug war budget reached $39 billion. So many tax dollars were used for a lost cause that could instead be used to help with other problems, such as homelessness and public healthcare.
The war on drugs basically ended the lives of millions, because they could not get jobs with a criminal record, or could even be behind bars for years. They could not access adequate resources to get help, or could be looked upon by everyone as criminals.
Anti-drug and tough-on-crime policies from the 1970s through the 1990s created a situation where the US, with less than 5% of the world’s population, has nearly 25% of the world's prisoners. The war on drugs also started the privatization of prisons. And then the private prisons lobby the government to make laws that imprison “criminals” more often and for the tiniest non-violent crimes. In the 1980s, while the number of arrests for all crimes had risen by 28%, the number of arrests for drug offenses rose 126%. It also led to the overcrowding of prisons, some far beyond their intended capacity.
In 1994, the United States Sentencing Commission found that two thirds of crack users were white or Hispanic, meanwhile nearly 85% of black people were found guilty of possession. The results were similar for drug trafficking, too.
We can see that drug criminalization does not work, and therefore drugs should be legal.