2_garcia_juan

Juan M. Garcia

Rhetoric

1 May 2001

Legalizing Drugs?

There are a growing number of people who think the United States Government should legalize drugs. Those people include lawyers, judges, police officers, and politicians. They want to legalize drugs because they have seen what the war on drugs has caused and that it is a never-ending battle. According to Ethan Nadelman, " The people who are for legalization are the citizens who have been victimized, in one way or another, by the drug war, and who now believe that our current drug policies are doing more harm than good." The opponents of legalizing drugs believe that if the government legalized drugs then there will be an increase in people addicted to drugs. In reality most drug users are not drug addicts. They consume drugs moderately and do not overdose like the opponents would like you to believe. Joseph Kane says, "Illegal drugs net astronomical profits for which people are willing to kill. Drug-related homicide rates are soaring, and innocent bystanders are caught in the cross fire " (61). Legalizing drugs would eliminate the black market, provide space in our prisons for violent offenders, help the seriously ill patients with pain, and save billions of dollars that go towards fighting the war on drugs. Opponents of the legalization of drugs say legalizing them will lead to the use of harder drugs such as LSD or Heroin, will increase the number of drug addicts, and crime.

There is some common ground between people who are for legalization and people who oppose legalization. The difference between them is the solution to the drug war. The proponents and opponents want the black market eliminated. They do not want the drugs available to children. Opponents want you to believe that proponents want drugs to be legal for everyone and that there would be no laws concerning the use of drugs. Proponents want the drugs for people over a certain age. There would be strict laws and punishments for people buying the drugs for minors. Like alcohol, people could not drive while under the influence of a drug. Educating our youth about the dangers of drug use will help prevent them from even trying them in the first place. Lee Brown says, " Providing them with prevention and education programs before they even consider the possibility of drugs will make them much stronger and wiser for the effort" (628). Proponents want to put a stop to the "drug related" crime that runs rampant throughout our city streets. According to Thomas Geers, "Tens of thousands of our children are caught in the violent network of gangs financed by the drug-trade and hundreds of thousands find their streets and neighborhoods torn apart by drug trade related crime" (235). Proponents feel the only way to stop these problems is making drugs legal. The opponents feel that spending more money on fighting drugs is the key to winning the drug war. Wayne Roques states, " The demand for drugs needs to be reduced by improving and expanding law enforcement, education, prevention, research, rehabilitation and recovery programs" (5). Proponents want drugs to be legal, which will drive the prices down and making drug dealing unprofitable.

When prohibition of alcohol was the law of the land, people like Al Capone were getting rich. During those times violence was destroying our cities. The Gangsters were fighting over control of illegal booze that was being distributed throughout our cities. Did we not learn from our past mistakes? Making alcohol illegal fostered more crime than it prevented. Prohibition of drugs is a major contributor to violence in our streets today. There are drug wars going on in our streets. They are fighting for control over this black market that makes billions of dollars each year. The fact that drugs are illegal is the very reason why there is so much drug crime, states Thomas Geers:

Perhaps the saddest aspect of drug prohibition is that it has helped

spread rather than retard the use of drugs by young people.

Somebody should have reviewed the lesson of prohibition:

suppression of taste defined as vice inexorably drives up profits and

increases the supply to meet the demand. The massive black market

attraction of profit, aggravated because of drug prohibition, tempts

otherwise law-abiding citizens, including young people, to engage in

the supply and demand of drugs. (235)

The selling of illegal drugs attracts our youth into doing the deeds of the drug dealer. Kids are attracted to the money they get from selling these drugs. Kids are selling drugs to other kids on playgrounds. Hardworking children are looked down upon because they do not make as much money working for minimum wage. There are many stories about drug related violence. For instance, Joshua Shenk writes, " In 1993 Launice Smith was killed in a shoot-out between rival drug dealers at a football game at an elementary school in Washington, D.C." (32). Legalizing drugs would extinguish this black market and the drug war between rival drug dealers. It would not entice kids to sell them because it would not be worth it. It would eliminate the violence that occurs in our inner cities for these drugs.

The United States government spends billons of dollars on this war. They spend the money on law enforcement and education programs. We hear in the news how the DEA has seized millions of dollars worth of drugs, but there is still a constant flow of illegal drugs entering our country. For the past 10 years we have spent billions of dollars, and still the drug war has not ended, and there is no foreseeable end. According to Daniel Cashman, "To date, education appears to be the only anti-drug program that has shown any measure of success" (62). We put a drug dealer in jail, and another one pops up on the corner to take his place. We spend money and valuable prison space for non-violent drug offenders, instead of imprisoning the murders and rapists. It costs thousands of dollars a year to house one nonviolent drug offender. Prisons are getting crowded and more are being built each year. Legalizing drugs would clear prison space and save us billions of dollars every year.

The Legalization of Marijuana for its medicinal purposes is a major debate in several states. Opponents of the legalization of drugs want you to believe that marijuana has no medicinal purposes. They say the effects of marijuana can be reproduced. Steve Forbes says, "The appetite-stimulating, nausea-relieving properties of marijuana can be reproduced in synthetic forms of the chemical THC which is called Marinol" (27). The synthetic forms that are available through prescription do not provide the same relief as the real thing. They also have side effects that adversely affect the patient. According to Jacob Sullam, "Many patients really do get relief from marijuana that they cannot obtain from legal alternatives, either because those drugs do not work for them or because they cannot stand the side effects." In 1996 California passed proposition 215, which allowed people to use marijuana for medical purposes with a written recommendation from a doctor. Marijuana helps relieve the pain associated with life threatening diseases. According to Lynn Zimmer and John Morgan, "Marijuana has been shown to be effective in reducing nausea induced by cancer chemotherapy, stimulating appetite in AIDS patients, and reducing intraocular pressure in people with glaucoma." Marijuana is a commonly used drug and there has never been any drug overdoses caused by it.

Legalization of drugs could mean government regulation of drugs. Many illegal drugs have other chemicals added to them, which cause overdoses. The government could regulate how the drugs are being distributed and how potent these drugs can be. The government could spend the money it saves on education, health care, or welfare reform. It would also be earning billions of dollars on the taxation of drugs if they were to become legal. Legalization would cripple the black market of illegal drug sales. It would drive prices lower and thus, drive the drug dealer out of business. Kane states, " Pricing drugs reasonably by legalization would virtually eliminate the crimes that terrify us" (61). The violence in the streets and schools would end because the drug war would be over. Opponents argue that legalization would increase drug-related problems and costs. Illegal drugs already cause drug-related problems and costs. The United States government already spends billions of dollars each year fighting the drug war. But instead of using the money to fight drugs we could be using the money for treatment facilities or education programs. Opponents also believe there will be an increase in crime and the number of addicts. Most people who use drugs live normal and productive lives. That is one of the misconceptions of people who use drugs. There have been presidents, actors, musicians and athletes who have experimented with drugs but were not addicted. Yes there are addicts out there. We could use the money the government would gain form the taxation of drugs to help the people who are addicted. But crime already exists because drugs are illegal. People commit crimes for drugs because the price of drugs is so high. By legalizing them, the cost would be low, and people would not have to commit crimes to get the drugs. According to Shenk, " Small amounts of plant leaves and powder that cost only pennies to grow and process sell for hundreds of dollars on the street" (32).

Proponents for legalization believe it's the key to ending the drug war. They believe that legalization of marijuana would bring relief to many terminally ill patients. Legalization would allow us to use the money we spend fighting the drug war on other programs that would be more successful. According to Shenk, "Making drugs legally available, with tight regulatory controls, would end the black market, and with it much of the violence, crime, and social pathology we have come to understand as drug related" (32). It would allow the United States government to tax the billions of dollars the drug market makes. This taxation would provide funding for drug abuse programs. Opponents want you to believe more problems will be created because drugs are already illegal. The drug-related problems we have today are created by the prohibition of drugs. Geers states, "Most drug-related crime is not related to the use of drugs; it is related to the dangerous underground economy created by the war on drugs" (235). The only way to correct these problems is to legalize drugs.

Sources Cited

Brown, Lee P. "Why the United States Will Never Legalize Drugs." Vital

Speeches of the Day 1 Aug. 1995: 628-629.

Cashman, Daniel J. "To Legalize or Not to Legalize." Security Management

(Feb.1990): 62-64.

Forbes, Steve. "Deadly Deceit. " Forbes 8 Sept: 27-28.

Geers, Thomas. "Legalize Drugs and Stop the War On People." Education

(Winter 1995): 235-237.

Kane, Joseph P. "The Challenge of Legalizing Drugs." America 1992: 61-63.

Nadelman, Ethan A. "Perspective on Legalizing Drugs." Los Angeles Times 19

Sept. 1999. 22 Mar. 2001 <http://www.lindesmith.org/

library.ethan_perspective2.html>.

Roques, Wayne J. "Legalizers Ignore Facts, Divide Front Lines of Drug War."

Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly 24 July 1995: 5.

Shenk, Joshua Wolf. "Why You Can Hate Drugs and Still Want to Legalize

Them." Washington Monthly Oct. 1995: 32-40.

Sullam, Jacob. "Weed Need." Reason 3 Apr. 2001. 5 Apr. 2001

<http://www.reason.com/sullum/040301.html>.

Zimmer Lynn, and John P. Morgan. "Marijuana Myths: Marijuana Facts." The

Lindesmith Center Aug. 1997. 22 Mar. 2001

<http: // www.marijuanafacts.org />.









			Juan M. Garcia Rhetoric 1 May 2001 Legalizing Drugs? There are a growing number of people who think the United States Government should legalize drugs. Those people include lawyers, judges, police officers, and politicians. They want to legalize drugs because they have seen what the war on drugs has caused and that it is a never-ending battle. According to Ethan Nadelman, " The people who are for legalization are the citizens who have been victimized, in one way or another, by the drug war, and who now believe that our current drug policies are doing more harm than good." The opponents of legalizing drugs believe that if the government legalized drugs then there will be an increase in people addicted to drugs. In reality most drug users are not drug addicts. They consume drugs moderately and do not overdose like the opponents would like you to believe. Joseph Kane says, "Illegal drugs net astronomical profits for which people are willing to kill. Drug-related homicide rates are soaring, and innocent bystanders are caught in the cross fire " (61). Legalizing drugs would eliminate the black market, provide space in our prisons for violent offenders, help the seriously ill patients with pain, and save billions of dollars that go towards fighting the war on drugs. Opponents of the legalization of drugs say legalizing them will lead to the use of harder drugs such as LSD or Heroin, will increase the number of drug addicts, and crime. There is some common ground between people who are for legalization and people who oppose legalization. The difference between them is the solution to the drug war. The proponents and opponents want the black market eliminated. They do not want the drugs available to children. Opponents want you to believe that proponents want drugs to be legal for everyone and that there would be no laws concerning the use of drugs. Proponents want the drugs for people over a certain age. There would be strict laws and punishments for people buying the drugs for minors. Like alcohol, people could not drive while under the influence of a drug. Educating our youth about the dangers of drug use will help prevent them from even trying them in the first place. Lee Brown says, " Providing them with prevention and education programs before they even consider the possibility of drugs will make them much stronger and wiser for the effort" (628). Proponents want to put a stop to the "drug related" crime that runs rampant throughout our city streets. According to Thomas Geers, "Tens of thousands of our children are caught in the violent network of gangs financed by the drug-trade and hundreds of thousands find their streets and neighborhoods torn apart by drug trade related crime" (235). Proponents feel the only way to stop these problems is making drugs legal. The opponents feel that spending more money on fighting drugs is the key to winning the drug war. Wayne Roques states, " The demand for drugs needs to be reduced by improving and expanding law enforcement, education, prevention, research, rehabilitation and recovery programs" (5). Proponents want drugs to be legal, which will drive the prices down and making drug dealing unprofitable. When prohibition of alcohol was the law of the land, people like Al Capone were getting rich. During those times violence was destroying our cities. The Gangsters were fighting over control of illegal booze that was being distributed throughout our cities. Did we not learn from our past mistakes? Making alcohol illegal fostered more crime than it prevented. Prohibition of drugs is a major contributor to violence in our streets today. There are drug wars going on in our streets. They are fighting for control over this black market that makes billions of dollars each year. The fact that drugs are illegal is the very reason why there is so much drug crime, states Thomas Geers: Perhaps the saddest aspect of drug prohibition is that it has helped spread rather than retard the use of drugs by young people. Somebody should have reviewed the lesson of prohibition: suppression of taste defined as vice inexorably drives up profits and increases the supply to meet the demand. The massive black market attraction of profit, aggravated because of drug prohibition, tempts otherwise law-abiding citizens, including young people, to engage in the supply and demand of drugs. (235) The selling of illegal drugs attracts our youth into doing the deeds of the drug dealer. Kids are attracted to the money they get from selling these drugs. Kids are selling drugs to other kids on playgrounds. Hardworking children are looked down upon because they do not make as much money working for minimum wage. There are many stories about drug related violence. For instance, Joshua Shenk writes, " In 1993 Launice Smith was killed in a shoot-out between rival drug dealers at a football game at an elementary school in Washington, D.C." (32). Legalizing drugs would extinguish this black market and the drug war between rival drug dealers. It would not entice kids to sell them because it would not be worth it. It would eliminate the violence that occurs in our inner cities for these drugs. The United States government spends billons of dollars on this war. They spend the money on law enforcement and education programs. We hear in the news how the DEA has seized millions of dollars worth of drugs, but there is still a constant flow of illegal drugs entering our country. For the past 10 years we have spent billions of dollars, and still the drug war has not ended, and there is no foreseeable end. According to Daniel Cashman, "To date, education appears to be the only anti-drug program that has shown any measure of success" (62). We put a drug dealer in jail, and another one pops up on the corner to take his place. We spend money and valuable prison space for non-violent drug offenders, instead of imprisoning the murders and rapists. It costs thousands of dollars a year to house one nonviolent drug offender. Prisons are getting crowded and more are being built each year. Legalizing drugs would clear prison space and save us billions of dollars every year. The Legalization of Marijuana for its medicinal purposes is a major debate in several states. Opponents of the legalization of drugs want you to believe that marijuana has no medicinal purposes. They say the effects of marijuana can be reproduced. Steve Forbes says, "The appetite-stimulating, nausea-relieving properties of marijuana can be reproduced in synthetic forms of the chemical THC which is called Marinol" (27). The synthetic forms that are available through prescription do not provide the same relief as the real thing. They also have side effects that adversely affect the patient. According to Jacob Sullam, "Many patients really do get relief from marijuana that they cannot obtain from legal alternatives, either because those drugs do not work for them or because they cannot stand the side effects." In 1996 California passed proposition 215, which allowed people to use marijuana for medical purposes with a written recommendation from a doctor. Marijuana helps relieve the pain associated with life threatening diseases. According to Lynn Zimmer and John Morgan, "Marijuana has been shown to be effective in reducing nausea induced by cancer chemotherapy, stimulating appetite in AIDS patients, and reducing intraocular pressure in people with glaucoma." Marijuana is a commonly used drug and there has never been any drug overdoses caused by it. Legalization of drugs could mean government regulation of drugs. Many illegal drugs have other chemicals added to them, which cause overdoses. The government could regulate how the drugs are being distributed and how potent these drugs can be. The government could spend the money it saves on education, health care, or welfare reform. It would also be earning billions of dollars on the taxation of drugs if they were to become legal. Legalization would cripple the black market of illegal drug sales. It would drive prices lower and thus, drive the drug dealer out of business. Kane states, " Pricing drugs reasonably by legalization would virtually eliminate the crimes that terrify us" (61). The violence in the streets and schools would end because the drug war would be over. Opponents argue that legalization would increase drug-related problems and costs. Illegal drugs already cause drug-related problems and costs. The United States government already spends billions of dollars each year fighting the drug war. But instead of using the money to fight drugs we could be using the money for treatment facilities or education programs. Opponents also believe there will be an increase in crime and the number of addicts. Most people who use drugs live normal and productive lives. That is one of the misconceptions of people who use drugs. There have been presidents, actors, musicians and athletes who have experimented with drugs but were not addicted. Yes there are addicts out there. We could use the money the government would gain form the taxation of drugs to help the people who are addicted. But crime already exists because drugs are illegal. People commit crimes for drugs because the price of drugs is so high. By legalizing them, the cost would be low, and people would not have to commit crimes to get the drugs. According to Shenk, " Small amounts of plant leaves and powder that cost only pennies to grow and process sell for hundreds of dollars on the street" (32). Proponents for legalization believe it's the key to ending the drug war. They believe that legalization of marijuana would bring relief to many terminally ill patients. Legalization would allow us to use the money we spend fighting the drug war on other programs that would be more successful. According to Shenk, "Making drugs legally available, with tight regulatory controls, would end the black market, and with it much of the violence, crime, and social pathology we have come to understand as drug related" (32). It would allow the United States government to tax the billions of dollars the drug market makes. This taxation would provide funding for drug abuse programs. Opponents want you to believe more problems will be created because drugs are already illegal. The drug-related problems we have today are created by the prohibition of drugs. Geers states, "Most drug-related crime is not related to the use of drugs; it is related to the dangerous underground economy created by the war on drugs" (235). The only way to correct these problems is to legalize drugs.

			Sources Cited Brown, Lee P. "Why the United States Will Never Legalize Drugs." Vital Speeches of the Day 1 Aug. 1995: 628-629. Cashman, Daniel J. "To Legalize or Not to Legalize." Security Management (Feb.1990): 62-64. Forbes, Steve. "Deadly Deceit. " Forbes 8 Sept: 27-28. Geers, Thomas. "Legalize Drugs and Stop the War On People." Education (Winter 1995): 235-237. Kane, Joseph P. "The Challenge of Legalizing Drugs." America 1992: 61-63. Nadelman, Ethan A. "Perspective on Legalizing Drugs." Los Angeles Times 19 Sept. 1999. 22 Mar. 2001 <http://www.lindesmith.org/ library.ethan_perspective2.html>. Roques, Wayne J. "Legalizers Ignore Facts, Divide Front Lines of Drug War." Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly 24 July 1995: 5. Shenk, Joshua Wolf. "Why You Can Hate Drugs and Still Want to Legalize Them." Washington Monthly Oct. 1995: 32-40. Sullam, Jacob. "Weed Need." Reason 3 Apr. 2001. 5 Apr. 2001 <http://www.reason.com/sullum/040301.html>. Zimmer Lynn, and John P. Morgan. "Marijuana Myths: Marijuana Facts." The Lindesmith Center Aug. 1997. 22 Mar. 2001 <http: // www.marijuanafacts.org />.