Decriminalize Drugs

One the many controversies in our country today, regards the prohibition of illegal narcotics. Deemed unhealthy, hazardous, and even fatal by the authorities that be; the U.S. government has declared to wage a "war on drugs." It has been roughly fifteen years since this initiative has begun, and each year the government shuffles more money into the unjust cause of drug prohibition. Even after all of this, the problem of drugs that the government sees still exists. The prohibition of drugs is a constitutional anomaly. There are many aspects and sides to look at the issue from, but the glaring inefficiency current laws exude is that any human should have the right to ingest anything he or she desires. The antagonist on the other end believes that by doing so chaos would result because of the ingestion of said substances. This purely speculation, and we have seen in the history of man that this has never occurred nor is there reason to believe it will happen this time.
Many proponents of the current drug laws claim that legalization and/or decriminalization would in turn increase the number of drug users. If a drug is legalized/decriminalized, the price will fall and the quantity of demand will rise. The evidence from prohibition suggests we can expect two broad patterns of response if legalization occurs. First, there will be a small rise in consumption, which will take place to some extent across the spectrum of consumers. People who had never used drugs may choose to use them. Secondly, there will be a change in the nature of the drugs used and in the way in which they will be used. Specifically, there will be a move toward less intensive drug forms and less abusive patterns of use. When drugs are illegal, more damaging drugs drive out less damaging ones. In jurisdictions that liberalize their drug laws, this process will reverse itself. The evidence on this from Prohibition is unequivocal: as soon as repeal occurred, the consumption of hard liquor dropped by more