How Does Legalizing Drugs Affect The Economy

A Drug Free country Major debate has been done about the legalization of drugs. People who are for the legalization of drugs believes that drug prices will fall, levels of drug-related crimes would decrease and as a result, have less crowded courts, and drug violence would reduce as well because cartels and mafias would no longer need to fight over drugs. The group that is against the legalization on drugs says that there would be new users, the new users would no longer keep track of their responsibilities, and more users would lead to more violence. William J. Bennet, author of “Drug Policy and the Intellectuals,” believes that the drug problem in the U.S. can
economy. Legalizing drugs may help government costs and tax revenues. Drugs can save the government billions annually in expenses related to prohibition and would gain a lot of tax revenue from placing taxes on the new legalized drugs, such as, cocaine and heroin. Jeffrey A. Miron and Katherine Waldock authors of “Making an Economic Case for Legalizing Drugs,” state that, “Legalization would reduce state and federal deficits by eliminating expenditure on prohibition enforcement-arrests, prosecutions, and incarceration- and by allowing governments to collect tax revenue on legalized sales.” By legalizing drugs, the government would save up to 41.3 billion dollars in expenditures related to drug prohibition. This would be a great boost in the economy; however, drug legalization means more drug users, which leads to more drug abuse and will most likely end up in the emergency
If drugs were to be legalized, families would be disintegrating because the drug user will be causing conflict with his or her relatives. Drug abuse creates risks. When a person is under the influence of drugs, he or she act violent towards their family members and sometimes get to the point where physical violence gets involved and even death. Not only does it risk a relative’s life but it could also affect the life in which the family lives in. Most income that comes in goes to drugs and an addict would use it all and have nothing left over to care for his or her family. Bills would be unpaid; food would not be served in the table, in a case of a son or daughter, he or she would be stealing money from parents, parents will have to constantly pay for treatment. Pregnant women that take drugs place risks on their babies while in the whom. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Babies born to mothers who abuse cocaine during pregnancy can be born prematurely and have low birth weights. There may be as many as 45,000 cocaine exposed babies a year.” Not only is the baby affected but costs for treatment towards the baby need to be taken into consideration to. Wilson mentions, “Women are much more likely to use crack than heroin, and if they are pregnant, the effects on their babies are tragic…There may be ways to treat such infants, but from everything we know the treatment will be long, difficult, and expensive.” I suppose