Drug Use, Regulation, and the Law - Essay Example

? Drug Use, Regulation, and the Law al Affiliation) Drug Use, Regulation, and the Law Drug Laws Gateway Hypothesis The psychoactive experience produced by marijuana is likely to open ways and motives for its users to other illicit and harmful drugs. The gateways hypothesis has been used to describe the progression of a marijuana users to the temptation of using other drugs such as heroin. Gateway hypothesis entails three considerations that are used to determine the potentiality of marijuana as a gateway to other drugs (Hanson and Venturelli et al., 2012). These considerations of the hypothesis include sequencing, association, and causation. In reference to sequencing, research indicates that marijuana is one of the soft drugs that is narcotic and easily leads to a sequence in an individual who progresses on to associate the sequence of marijuana to another a drug for more pleasure (Mcgarrell and Hutchens, 2001). The use of marijuana has controversial opinions on its addictiveness. However, it remains clear that continued use of marijuana leads to the desire of the user to associate it with other illicit drugs. The continued use of the drug (marijuana) is what the gateway hypothesis considers as sequencing. Remarkably, the use of cannabis is associated with the use of other illicit drugs as well as the vulnerability of the marijuana to use a wider variety of illicit drugs, a consideration that the gateway hypothesis refers to as association. Association is closely related to the age of the individual with most research showing that the use of marijuana Leads most teenagers to use other diversified drugs. Sequencing and association of marijuana leads to the causation because of the probability that individual using marijuana will have a certain random progression that can be analyzed as sequential pattern towards the use of other stronger drug of the same group and stronger such as heroin and cocaine. Given the pattern that most individuals who take marijuana have, it is clear that it is “gate opener” to other drugs such as heroin. Controversial Issues in Law Enforcement Profiling Court rulings have portrayed controversial issues on law enforcement profiling whereby drug suspects are based on ethnicity, racial and specific characteristics that an individual of target dug courier may have according to the profiles stipulated by the police. Consequently, this prompted the U.S Supreme Court to launch an investigation on the profile of drug courier. The cases that the supreme court of U.S ordered indicated that the police and other law enforcers fail to apprehend the drug courier and ends p arresting innocent citizens who portray any characteristics of the Drug courier profile. However, apart from the profile listing the characteristics portrayed by drug traffickers, the Supreme Court strictly defined restrictions in other decisions while safeguarding some verdicts emerging from the drug-courier profile. One of the most significant examples of criticism on the law is when a drug agent stopped a woman known as Mendenhall at an airport claiming that she fitted the characteristics and behaviors of the drug-courier profile. Coincidentally, the search on the woman indicated that she was a drug courier (Mcgarrell and Hutchens, 2001). Surprisingly, the court ruled in favor of the agent that it was not a violation of the Fourth-amendment protection from unreasonable search. Controversially, the same court in favor of Reid who was confiscated at the airport of Georgia with allegations that he matched the drug courier profile. The court ruled that the federal agent had violated Reid’s Fourth amendment requirement of a reasonable search and drug suspicion bases. This court statistic indicates that the law does not have a clear stipulation of drug courier a profiling. Additionally, statistics an airport stops concerning drug courier profile have indicated that most suspected drug couriers are African-Americans who are stopped in various airports in a disproportional manner. This contradicts the court’s allegations that discriminatory investigation on drugs based on races violates the constitution. Strategies for Regulating Illicit Drugs Regulation of illicit drugs requires three main strategies to stop the increased prevalence of drug use that include supply reduction, demand reduction, and inoculation strategies (Hanson and Venturelli et al., 2012). However, each of the strategies possesses weaknesses and strengths in prevention of illicit drug use. Supply reduction strategy is a focused to stop the manufacture as well as distribution of classified illicit drugs. The strategy entails a policy of supply reduction, which is restrictive and aims at eliminating available drugs. Supply reduction tries to curtail illegal drugs supply and their precursors exerting a higher control. An example of an activity for supply reduction policy is interdiction, which is the process of decreasing drug agents crossing borders to traffic drugs to the U.S. Nevertheless, this strategy has a weakness in such that if demand for the drugs persists, a replacement of the drug is likely to be supplied to users. Demand Reduction Strategy Demand reduction aims at decreasing the use of drugs by individuals by emphasizing on reforming values and behaviors, which often aims at the young teenagers. The focus of this strategy is to reduce youth’s tendencies in using illegal drugs with various activities that will see them change their behaviors, attitudes, and values. The effectiveness of this plan is based on that, it focuses on individual problem ensuring that every drug user reforms and stop the use of drugs. However, a major challenge for the strategy is that most young adults resist drug based rehabilitation programs. An example of demand reduction activity is educating the youth about drug abuse in a substantially careful manner. Inoculation Strategy Inoculation strategy main aim is to educate individuals on the importance of being responsible. Remarkably, responsibility plays an important role in reducing drug use. Once uses are taught to be responsible, they tend to be accountable and take responsibility after realizing the effects of drugs on their lives. Inoculation face a bigger challenge because of the increasing number of illicit drug users in U.S, which is making it difficult to provide drug effect education because of the cost involved. An example of inoculation strategy activity is the use of many public awareness advertisements that cautions against drinking and using illicit drugs. Controlled Substance Schedule The 1970 controlled Substance act consisted of five controlled substance schedule that included schedule I, schedule II, schedule III, schedule IV, and schedule V (Justice.Gov, 2013). All this schedules affected the manner and the process that is used by today courts’ ruling on drug users and couriers. Schedule I defines drugs or substances that have a high abuse potential and are not of any use in the medicine field such as marijuana and peyote. Schedule II defines drugs or substances that have a high abuse potential that leads to psychological dependence, but lower than schedule I. They include cocaine and Ritalin among others. Schedule III defines drugs or substances that have a moderate potential for psychological dependences are have a less abuse potential. An example of schedule III drug is anabolic steroids. Schedule IV defines drugs or substances with low abuse and dependence potential, for example, valium. Lastly, Schedule V defines drugs or substances with much lower abuse potentials, which are generally used for antitussive and antidiarrheal purposes, for example Lyrica (Justice.Gov, 2013). Controlled substance schedule relates to the current prosecution of licit and illicit drug users as it provides the basis on which to classify a certain drug found in position of drug traffickers or users. Every schedule has a different abuse potentiality and psychological dependences, which the present-day federal drug enforcement uses in delivering sentences in courts. However, the schedule has controversies that it does not clearly identify and distinguish medical drugs and illicit drugs despite some being on the same schedule and a person can be mistaken and prosecuted of possessing a drug that is meant for medical use. References Hanson, G., Venturelli, P. and Fleckenstein, A. (2012). Drugs and society. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Justice.Gov (2013). DEA / Drug Scheduling. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.justice.gov/dea/druginfo/ds.shtml [Accessed: 21 Oct 2013]. Mcgarrell, E. and Hutchens, J. (2001). Reducing illegal drug use in the United States. Westfield, Ind.: Hudson Institute. Read More