Dug Legalization in America - Essay Example

Users who cause no harm to others are incarcerated which not only ruins their professional and private lives but overcrowds the prison system which allows the early release of violent criminals. It has been said that trying to stop drugs is like trying to stop the rain, still, the ‘war’ continues as a prominent issue. Over half of the prisoners in jail are there for drug ‘crimes.’ This causes overcrowding which results in the early release of dangerous, violent criminals. It is illogical from a societal view and inhumane to individuals who are marked as a criminal for life for activity that causes no harm to others.

Those who are addicted receive little or no therapeutic help in prison. Instead of imprisoning people that need help, rehabilitation programs are a much more effective method to treat the problem but a rehabilitation system will not succeed if drugs continue to be illegal.  Drug abusers will hardly seek help from the same government that tosses them in jail for the same thing. The hypocrisy of the drug war is apparent. All illegal drugs combined account for about 4,500 deaths in this country per year while tobacco is responsible for the deaths of 400,000 people annually and alcohol ends 80,000 people’s lives every year.

(Fu, 2006) Legislators will not ban smoking because they indicate regulation regarding what adults do in privacy including what they can put into their bodies is clearly unconstitutional and an infringement on personal liberties.  Everyone can differentiate the distinction between a person that takes in an occasional alcoholic beverage and one who commits crimes while drunk.  Why can’t this simplistic reasoning be applied to drug users? Our code of law is founded upon a principle of presumptive rationality.

  Rational adults should be allowed to make personal choices as long as those actions cause no harm to others.  The U.S. government is unequivocally unjustified in choosing this particular