The ways to deal with drug abuse in the country - Research Proposal Example

? Dealing With Drug Abuse: A Proposal In a research conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, it was found that marijuana use continues to increase as the perceived risk for the drug is falling. In fact, the research found that even 8th graders are now using the drug and one in 16 high school seniors is daily marijuana user (Johnston et al. 5). Heroin use with a needle has increased by 0.4% as compared to its 2009 figures. While the use of cocaine, sedatives and Vicodin are decreasing, such decline is insignificant as more and more youth rediscover “club drugs”, such as ecstacy, meth, LSD and other hallucinogens. According to the report, the process of “generational forgetting1” keeps the drug epidemic going. Despite the existing drug prevention strategies employed by the government, the number of drug users is increasing, and the age of first use is decreasing. Meanwhile, the government continues to spend a huge amount of money on law enforcement and treatment of drug users. In 2005 alone, the government has already spent more than $400 billion for abuse-related cases (Eckholm). With the economy in turmoil, the government is forced to cut costs in order to address other issues in the country. As such, one can expect that spending on drug-related issues will fall and new social issues will arise. Already, many researches are pointing substance abuse as a determinant to poor health and crime. If the government continues to use the old strategies it has been employing, one expect the rise in other social problems such as homelessness, domestic violence and child abuse (Eckholm). As can be seen from the discussion above, one can already see that there is a need for a better program to address drug use. As such, this paper hopes to discover new ways to deal with drug abuse in the country. It seeks to review three of the most common proposals for the “War against Drug Use and Distribution in the US” - prohibition, decriminalization and legalization - and hopes to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each suggestion. In the latter part of this paper, a new proposal on how drug use can be addressed more effectively will be summarized, and a system or process will be determined in order to make the proposal a reality. Prohibition As A Solution To The Drug Problem Over the years, the United States has adhered to prohibition as a national drug control policy. In a 1992 assessment conducted by Peter Reuter, he found that 80% of budget allocation for federal drug control went to law enforcement. Of course, this is just one indicator of the prevalence of drug prohibition measures in the country. A research through history shows a number of drug laws that aims to criminalize drug manufacture, distribution and consumption (Yablon). Various states impose various penalties – some may revoke a drug offender’s driver’s license, while others punish even the simple possession of marijuana with incarceration (Reuter 21). The need for vigorous enforcement came as result of the carnage arising from drug use and distribution. The increase in violent crimes and the apparent threat to the health of the community cannot be addressed by prevention alone – the effects of drug abuse are happening, and there is a need to stop drug offenders from causing additional harm to the society. For [law enforcement advocates] the heart of the matter is the threat to the youth and to American values; drug use means an abandoning of concern with others, and focusing on short-term pleasures for oneself. It is a lack of clarity about values in society and a failure to ensure that drug use is punished that leads to so many young people becoming regular users of psychoactives. (Reuter 18) Through intense enforcement of drug laws, and by criminalizing drug use and distribution, drugs become more difficult to obtain. Moreover, users will find drugs legally risky; thus, reinforcing the messages of drug prevention. Drug prohibition advocates believe that by controlling the drug market, the way in which people view the drug problem, as well as control the consumption of drugs (Nadelmann 87-88), in effect controlling the adverse effects of drug use According to Reuter’s article, the enforcement of stringent sentencing statutes have increased over the years. Arrests have risen by more than 100% from 1980 to 1990. Meanwhile, drug convictions have increased by 70% between 1986 to 1988 alone (Reuter 27). As the number of drug users has increased over the years, one can already expect that the number of arrested and incarcerated drug users have risen. Research shows, however, that drug use among the youth continues to increase and that trends are not absolute. In fact, drug use varies across different population groups. For example, drug dependence was found to be more concentrated among young, African-American males who live in inner-city communities. Such finding shows that there are other determinants to drug use and distribution and that incarceration alone is not enough to address these factors. This is perhaps the reason why drug use is still increasing among the youth – social problems which exacerbate the tendency towards drug abuse are not addressed. By recognizing that there is there are other reasons aside from amorality, selfishness or lack of clear social values (Reuter 19) that leads an individual to resort to drugs, new drug policy regimes have been explored. Legalization of Drugs as a Solution to the Drug Problem Legalization of drug use came as a liberal neutrality and economic theory. According to liberal neutrality, the state has to be neutral in its view of the “good” life. Instead, it is up to the individual to provide a definition for it. For some individuals, the good life may mean the right to recreational use of drugs. When the state imposes criminal prohibitions to recreational drug use, it is impeding the right of the individual to the good life (Husak; Moore). Aside from the philosophical implications of drug prohibition, there are also economic concerns. Several researchers have shown that a focus on law enforcement has led to the need for a huge budget for the hiring of additional staff and the creation of new policies. Moreover, some claim that the increase in drug users proves that law drug prohibition is ineffective and that the government should consider legalizing drug use and focus on controlling distribution and proliferating drug education. Such approach allows at-risk populations to make their own educated decisions on whether or not to utilize drugs. Kenneth Warner says that legalization of drugs takes many forms – “from an unfettered “supermarket” or freely available drugs to highly regulated conditions of sale and promotion, with restrictions on age, time, place and condition of use” (643). He notes that the costs and benefits of legalizing drugs can differ depending on the kind being sold. In his article, Warner reviewed various researches which utilized the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) approach to prove that drug legalization can be more effective than drug prohibition. By legalizing drug consumption and distribution, the government can eliminate costs in the aggressive application of the criminal justice system (from arrest to incarceration, and combating international drug syndicates). Drug-related health-care costs will also be reduced since individuals will get specific information about the pros and cons of using a drug type. By regulating drug distribution, the government can have control over specific social costs of drug use. Perhaps the most important reason for legalizing drugs is that the government can earn from the tax revenues of drug sale (Warner 646). Despite the philosophical and economic importance of legalizing drugs, many members of the society are still wary of this regime particularly because there are still loopholes in the policy. For one, some civil libertarians are seeking the right to consume specific drugs, at specific amounts. What these drugs are, and whether or not these drugs are dangerous, have to be backed up by research before they are finally allowed in the mainstream. Meanwhile, by legalizing drugs, drug use can be expected to go up. Will the government be able to control the distribution of these legal drugs? If not, then there is a possibility for social decay as drug users may have trouble controlling their own consumption. Also, in order to control drug distribution special monitoring boards have to be created, and this, again, will bring economic burden to the government. For many, the question of legalizing or prohibiting drugs depends on which value will prevail – is the individual right to the good life have greater value over the right to a peaceful life of the majority? As these two opposing views are taken on by policy makers, a “third way” arises, but this one attempts to deal with the underlying issues of drug use. In this regime, drug abuse is seen as a health care issue and the community is tapped to provide support to drug addicts. Through the decriminalization of drug, drug offenders can learn to integrate with society again; hence preventing them from reverting back to their life of addiction and possibly, of crime. Decriminalization of Drugs as a Solution Decriminalization of drug means that individuals can use and possess drugs, but only for their personal consumption. Unlike drug prohibition, anyone caught with a modest amount of drugs in their possession are given warning, or are recommended for compulsory treatment. Unlike drug legalization, it only deals with the demand side – manufacture and distribution is still illegal (Yablon 3). Decriminalization comes in different forms. In the United States, a new National Drug Control Strategy was launched in 2010 to reduce drug use by 15% by 2015 (Office of the President of the United States 1). The strategy focused on making drug abuse as a health concern and utilized the assistance of communities in educating individuals at-risk about the effects of drug addiction and rehabilitating drug users. It also established laws that prohibited driving while under the influence of drugs and launched researches that sought to determine the causes of drug usage. Through this strategy, the government hoped to break the cycle of drug use, crime, delinquency and incarceration (Office of the President of the United States 2). Perhaps one of the most important contributions of this new strategy is the creation of drug courts, a specialized court that helps non-violent drug users a chance to recover and become productive citizens. The importance of drug courts as a method of decriminalization was aptly described by Matthew Perry, official Drug Court Advocate of the White House: drug courts are wonderful solution to the ever growing problem of addicts being caught up in the criminal justice system…for [the] first time, non-violent drug offenders, drug courts give them the opportunity to not just be thrown in into jail but to recover, get into the process of recovery….it saves money and it saves lives. (Office of the President of the United States, “Supporting alternatives to incarceration”) By involving the community in the resolution of the drug problem, the government puts the decision-making back to the people who are most affected. It must be noted, however, that the decriminalization of drugs extends only to those who do not wish to create harm in the society – it is not for all drug offenders who knowingly proliferate drug addiction of the youth. Instead, it adheres to an old adage, “save the user, jail the pusher” – it seeks to stop the drug epidemic by empowering the community and helping drug users become accepted again in the society. Proposing a New Drug Control Policy Over the years, there has been a considerable debate on what kind of drug control regime should be imposed by the government. From the discussions above, one can see that each of the three policies have their own limitations. Moreover, by reading various researches on how to deal with the drug epidemic, I have come to realize that any social issue has institutional and individual roots. For example, some youth may succumb to peer pressure because they are still insecure of their position in society, while others blame their poverty because they have no other means of earning income (except through illegal methods such as selling drugs). As the new drug czar, I have come to realize the importance of research and the involvement of the community in dealing with the drug problem. The punitive trend of American drug policy has attached a stigma to drug users, as if they will not be able to correct their wrongs. Putting them to jail, and leaving them to serve one-third of their lives in incarceration may deter drug use, but it also creates the message that even a drug user is an enemy – even when the drug user has served his/her sentence, he/she is not accepted by the society. Because they drug users are led to believe that they can no longer lead productive lives because of their arrest or conviction, they continue on the path of drugs and crime, hence intensifying the social problem. The cycle goes on and on, and the drug users, who could’ve been tapped to teach about the adverse effects of drugs, go on to become drug sellers and proliferate drug dependence in the youth. Hence, I realize that the third option, the decriminalization of drugs can be an effective solution. Decriminalization in this case means creation of rules that allows individuals to possess a certain amount of drugs, and send them off for recovery and treatment in case they are found to be dependent to drugs. Gernot Tagler, Jonathan Caulkins and Gustav Feichtinger provided a method that will enable the government to assess populations and determine the level drug use. Through this method, the community will know whether it will utilize prohibition or treatment strategies. Tagler et al. provided a clear summary of their recommendations: If initiation into drug use is an increasing function of the current number of users and control begins early, then it is optimal to use very large amounts of both enforcement and treatment to cut short the epidemic….If initiation rates subsequently decline, enforcement budget share should drop. (Tragler, Caulkins, and Feichtinger 352) The government should install one agency which will be primarily responsible for researches on the trends of drug use. The researches should not only focus on how many youths are taking drugs, and what drugs they are perusing, instead, it should also provide data on the races which are more prone to drug addiction (as opposed to drug use), and determine the socio-economic background of these addicts. Another institution has to be setup that will provide clinical solution to the drug problem, but more importantly, there has to be an institution that will teach communities on how they can empower drug users and at-risk youths so as to curtail the drug epidemic. Empowerment can come in various forms – from educational programs to livelihood opportunities and strengthening of life skills. The government has to facilitate this training so that community members themselves will learn the skills on how to deal with the youth and how they can effective teach their lessons without becoming condescending on drug offenders and at-risk populations. Community leaders must also be skilled at creating recovery and treatment processes depending on the characteristics of their clientele (Office of the President of the United States, 2010 National drug control strategy). Another important feature of this proposal is the reform of the criminal justice system so that it does not only address their criminal activities but also the reasons they may have for substance abuse (Office of the President of the United States, 2010 National drug control strategy). Concerned agencies must create a plan for all incarcerated drug offenders so that they can re-integrate with the society and find ways on how they can contribute to the society’s welfare. Prisoners jailed due to drug abuse or distribution must be rehabilitated in-house using the same techniques used by the community. Moreover, particular attention must be given to minority groups including women and African-American youth who need special care in order to overcome possible emotional issues that come with their incarceration. Conclusions While the conclusions I have made here are backed by research, it must be noted that they are not boxed-in suggestions. I believe in the importance of research, and the need to discover which population groups are most in need of intervention. There is no cure-all solution when it comes to the drug epidemic; instead, every community has to find a drug control regime that fits its needs. For this particular topic, I believe in the importance of the community because much of the drug problem stems from its dynamics. In order to empower their members, community leaders must be empowered themselves. They have to be educated about the drug problem and be taught about the various strategies available to them in order to resolve this crisis. It is important to note that a top-down solution to any social problem has been found ineffective mainly because of the differences in communities and populations. As such, the government itself must be devolving some of its functions in order to take advantage of the economic and social benefits of community involvement in the drug epidemic. 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