But if these « reforms » do not make all illicit drugs available at low prices to all willing buyers, there will be a large and destructive illicit market for these addictive substances. Indeed, by reducing the legal and other pressures that reject illicit drug use, these « reforms » will all increase illicit drug use, and with this increase will come the harm it causes. In addition, legal drugs, i.e. alcohol and nicotine, offer poor models for legalization. Tax revenues from these drugs are dwarfed by their social and health care costs. The same goes for marijuana and any other illegal drug. Some people who hear the words « legalization of drugs » imagine dealers on street corners distributing cocaine to everyone, even children. But that`s what exists today under prohibition. Think of legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco: their potency, time and place of sale and age limits are set by law.

Warnings are also required on medications, some of which are only available by prescription. The decriminalization of drugs is something of an intermediate product between prohibition and legalization and has been criticized by Peter Lilley as « the worst of both worlds, »[20] since the sale of drugs would still be illegal, perpetuating the problems associated with handing over the production and distribution of drugs to the criminal underworld. while not discouraging illicit drug use by removing criminal penalties that might otherwise cause some people to choose not to use them. Drugs. When the General Assembly meets, it will also have to deal with the startling fact that four states and the capital of the world`s most passionate drug trafficker have completely legalized marijuana. « We are now faced with the fact that the United States cannot apply at the national level what it promotes elsewhere, » a member of the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board, which monitors international compliance with the conference`s guidelines, told me. Just before Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia put themselves on the legal marijuana list, the State Department`s top drug control official, William Brownfield, abruptly changed his position. While he had previously stated that « drug control conventions cannot be changed, » he admitted in 2014 that things had changed: « How could I, as a representative of the U.S. government, be intolerant of a government that allows experiments in marijuana legalization when two of the fifty states in the United States of America have decided to go this way? » Jaws have plummeted throughout the drug reform community.

We have become accustomed to living with the consequences of legalizing alcohol, even though alcohol is undeniably expensive for the nation. But few would argue for a return to prohibition, in part because the alcohol industry is so lucrative and powerful. Heavy drinkers – 20% of the drinking population – consume more than half of the alcohol sold, meaning that despite all the industry`s pious exhortations to « drink responsibly », what matters is that people do the opposite. At the same time, the influence of large spirits keeps taxes low. NYU`s Kleiman estimates alcohol taxes at about a penny per drink; The social costs of illness, car accidents and violence are about fifteen times higher. Neither the economics of the binge eating of alcohol nor the industry`s co-optation of the regulatory process is something we want to emulate in the legalization of substances like heroin and crack. We need to do a better job of legalizing drugs than relegalizing alcohol if we want to minimize addiction, keep drugs out of the hands of children, ensure purity and consistency of dosage, and restrict driving under the influence of drugs. Last November, Ohio voters opposed legalizing marijuana, according to most observers, precisely because the proposed initiative would have allowed only ten companies, all of which sponsored the initiative, to grow and distribute marijuana in the state. The legalization of drugs requires a return to the parameters of the Food and Pure Drugs Act before 1906, when almost all drugs were legal. This would require ending the government-imposed ban on the distribution or sale and personal use of some (or all) of the currently banned drugs.

Proposed ideas range from full legalization, which would completely eliminate all forms of state control, to various forms of regulated legalization, where drugs would be legally available but under a state control system, which could mean, for example:[15] In the United States, various individuals and groups have lobbied for the legalization of marijuana on medical grounds.