How Can We Solve Our Social Problems? by James A. Crone

Author:James A. Crone [Crone, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781506304830
Google: JQzRsgEACAAJ
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2015-11-25T05:11:51+00:00

What makes drug enforcement especially vulnerable to corruption are the tremendous amounts of money involved in the business. Today, many law enforcement officials believe that police corruption is more pervasive than at any time since Prohibition. Repealing the drug prohibition laws would dramatically reduce police corruption. (pp. 19–20)

Another advantage to legalizing drugs is that it gives adults in our country more freedom to choose whether or not to take drugs and what drugs to take.6 Rather than the government deciding for them, individual adults can choose whether or not to use marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and other drugs. As we mentioned in the previous section, it may be fruitful for our country to have a national discussion on whether or not adults should have freedom to choose to use drugs.

Another advantage of legalizing drugs is that there will be less negative labeling of the users of drugs. Right now, people who use illegal drugs are many times labeled as deviant. This label makes it harder for these people to live normal lives. If drugs are legalized, the stigma of a drug user could lessen and hence the effects of this stigma could be less in drug users’ lives. Users would be less likely to be discriminated against and more likely to be able to get and keep legal jobs, pay their bills, and interact with people who have legal jobs, thereby making users more likely to engage in legitimate activities in various areas of their lives and less likely to commit crime.

Another major advantage of legalizing drugs is that the government will be able to tax the sale of these drugs.7 This could be a major source of new tax revenue badly needed for local, state, and federal governments. Given that all levels of government need more revenue, taxing the sale of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and other drugs would be beneficial for the government and, at the same time, take some of the pressure off of other taxpayers as their taxes decrease.

Another key advantage of legalizing drugs is that it will create new legal jobs. For example, farmers growing plants in other countries that produce marijuana, cocaine, and heroin will not be stigmatized and will not have their governments and our own government working against them to grow these crops. This will, in turn, bring in more revenue for these countries and their governments and for the farmers and middle people who process the crops into the drugs and transport them to countries that consume the drugs. Legalization will also create new agricultural jobs in our country in that farmers will be able to grow plants that produce marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. We will need more people in our country to process the plants, check for purity, transport the drugs, and sell the drugs at local drugstores. So, legalizing these drugs would create more jobs in our country and especially would give a stimulus to people who work in agriculture and related jobs.

Finally, users will have information about the purity of the drug and what else is contained in the products they purchase.

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