Doing so allows for the treatment of addiction as a health issue, not a crime that should be punished, and it also paves the way for increasing personal autonomy.
People should not be put in a cage for struggling with an addiction, or for making non-violent choices in their own private lives and homes, and it is a grave moral failing that everyone currently incarcerated because of possession alone is not released immediately.
This legislation would also greatly reduce crime, freeing up prison space and other executive branch resources for actual matters of concern, as well as allow research to be done on substances that have already shown immense promise in medicine, especially mental healthcare. It is well past time that we change our perspectives on drug use and drug addiction.
Legalizing all drugs caused major issues in those areas that have done so. This would not be a wise decision. Legalizing Marijuana is for recreational use and psychedelics for medically supervised use are the only ones I could see voting for.
Psychedelics should be legal for recreational use as well, they pose even less of a health risk than marijuana and are actually anti addictive. Not only do you not get hooked on them but they can treat addiction of other substances and habits.
Cocaine even is not as addictive as alcohol and nicotine, but I understand the argument of not wanting to introduce very hard drugs such as meth or heroin into a culture without letting it adapt. Still, I think any argument against decriminalization is just that, an appeal to an immature culture. Thus this argument only defends the belief that decriminalization should be a very gradual process, not that it should never happen.
I oversee the UR department for a behavioral medicine unit. We see a lot of patients going through detox. We have also seen people with psychotic breaks due to use of drugs. I also oversee case management and UR for a physical rehab center. We are seeing more and more patients who have major neurological damage from drug use and more who have had a stroke due to drug use. I do not think legalizing all drugs for recreational use would be wise. Marijuana appears to be no worse than alcohol (with the exception of synthetic marijuana) from what we see it is actually less damaging to the body than alcohol. They other drugs are a different story. I look at marijuana because it is the least damaging of the controlled substances that has the most criminal record impact on the minority population.
Currently illicit drugs have not been legalized anywhere in America, except for cannabis in a number of States. There has been decriminalization in several areas. Different from legalization, decrim leaves the control of the market in the hands of criminal cartels and gangs. Most of the dangers, and the crime associated with illicit drug use, and the lack of quality control remain……and that’s why decrim looks like such a failure, that and a lack of support services.