Drugs Prohibition (1538 words)

Drugs Prohibition
Under the United States Constitution the federal government is charged with the
responsibilities to protect our individual, as well as collective, rights to
life and liberty. Often times this charge leads the various branches of the
federal government to create, implement, and enforce policy that is designed to
protect society from itself. Noble in it’s ambition the result although not
apparent initially, sometimes does more to hinder the rights of the citizens it
is attempting to protect, and/or the cost of doing so becomes a higher price
than that of the cost that is being avoided. In this case it is necessary to
re-evaluate the situation and explore any alternatives that may offer a more
fathomable solution concerning both protection of rights as well as the cost of
so doing. ? Introduction In the late 1980’s the United States
government made such policy and today the results have done little to resolve
the problem and have left the country closer to the danger it sought to prevent.

The policy is known as the ” War on Drugs”. Initially the drug prohibition
was, however idealistic, a valiant attempt to rid the country of this terrible”enemy”. The objectives were simple; to impose stiff penalties on those who
use drugs outlined to be illicit, quell all to trade and commerce of such
substances, and even to go as far to prevent countries with in our general
border vicinity from producing and exporting these substances. The illicit drug
market, pre-drug war, is estimated to be a hundred billion dollar a year
business. The federal government, since the beginning the war of drug, spends
approximately ten billion dollars a year on drug enforcement agencies and
programs, and another estimated one hundred and ninety billion dollars a year on
investigating drug related crimes, prosecution of alleged drug activities, and
enforcing punishments and/or imprisonment. That adds up to be a staggering cost
of two hundred billion dollars ($770.00 per person) to attempt to prevent one
hundred billion dollars worth of illicit drug use. (Evans and Berent) Another
consequence of this questionable war lies in Opportunity cost. Opportunity cost
is defined as the cost of opportunity lost in pursuit of another option. This
cost analysis is relevant in the case of the drug prohibition policy in that the
resources use to implement the policy are limited, police and prisons. The law
enforcement used in this “war of drugs” has their time nearly monopolized by
the approximate thirty to forty million people yearly who purchase and use
drugs. This inherently leaving various law enforcement agencies with less
ability to confront other crimes. Then there is the problem of prisons. The
space in the prisons is extremely limited, and the cost of keeping a person in
prison is astronomical in caparison to the prevention being provided in
reference to drug prohibition. The issue of limited prison space gains
significance greatly when you consider an estimated sixty-percent of prison
population is serving time on drug conviction. In 1994 some seven hundred and
fifty thousand people were arrested in drug related events. Of the seven hundred
and fifty thousand people arrested, six hundred thousand of them were charged
with minor counts of possession. (Wink) Other indicators that can be easily
observed such as the rise in illicit drug use by teens and children reported the
Drug Enforcement Agency. In fact only twenty-eight percent of teens used illicit
drug compared to a whopping forty percent in 1996. (DEA/CDC) The misallocation
of resources is totally exhausting and paralyzing the entire legal system that
could be better targeted on a more productive agenda. What does the policy of
drug prohibition actually encourage? The statistics show a rise in crimes
concerning personal property; drug abusers in hopes of supporting their drug
habit committed seventy-five percent of all property crimes such as burglary and
robbery. Studies have shown that out patient drug programs or programs that
offered drugs for a lower cost drastically reduced the amount of crimes
committed. (Duke) As of 1992 an estimated sixty million people have tried and or
used marijuana and there has yet to be one recorded death attributed to
overdose. While it is estimated that ten thousand people die from overdose of
alcohol annually. This would lead one to acknowledge that maybe our opinion
drugs may be based in fear and social standard rather than in solid facts.

? The Goal The optimal goal of any policy is to protect our rights while
encouraging all the ideals of the society. The problem occurs in the fact that
is fairly impossible