Legalisation of Some Drugs

This next article is called “legalise drugs – all of them” from the Los Angeles Times and it is by Norm Stamper. Norm Stamper says that we have started a war on drugs, also there has been a huge increase in federal and state prisons population during the 1980s and ‘90s. So from 139 people per 100 000 residents in 1980 to the figures 482 per 100 000 in 2003. Most of the population were for drug convictions. So in 1980 580 900 Americans were arrested on drug charges, and by 2003 the number had jumped up to 1,678 200. Police in America are making more arrests for drug offense than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape and aggravated assault all combined together.

Norm Stamper says he has witnessed they cruel effects of drug markets in resident neighbourhoods, children enlisted as runners, mules and lookouts. It has gone to the extent of drug dealers and innocent citizens shot dead in firefights between competing traffickers bent on protecting or expanding their markets. Prisons filled with nonviolent drug offenders and drug related foreign policies that foster political instability, wreak health and environment disasters, and make life even tougher for indigenous subsistence farmers in places such as Latin America and Afghanistan. This is because “we like our drugs – and can’t have them without breaking the law”. As it is forbidden by law, the price of drugs do produce a large amount of untaxed money and a powerful magnet for character-challenged police officers.

Some cops even seize they drugs and use them for their own purposes. They would even set suspects up by planting dope on them, stealing, and probably take up dealing themselves. Also sometimes they would be intimidating and murdering witnesses. Norm Stamper than says declaring war on drugs means that we have also declared war on our fellow citizens. War consists of hostiles, enemies people who we fear and loathe. This group of millions of our citizens justifies treating them as low as dope fiends. This means that this grants political license to ban the exchange or the purchase of clean needles or to with methadone from heroin addicts motivated to kick the addiction. Even if the drugs is providing positive medical values George W. Bush says no.

All of the above is opinions of how America is dealing with “the legalisation of some drugs”. 

From the Herald Sun one doctor says legalise all drugs. ALL drugs should be legalised to help address addiction and prison overloading, a doctor told the Australia 2020 summit. This doctor is Wendell Rosevear who is a GP who has before worked in the prison system for more than 30 years, he says that people would change their behaviour only if they have have choices.

A couple of quotes from the article which Wendell Rosevear says are “I want to give drug addicts choices and I want to legalise all drugs in Australia, another one is “Drugs are illegal, so we put people in jail to solve the problem and we label people who use drugs as bad – it doesn’t make them feel valuable”, “we need honesty to deal with the issue”, “If we think that we can just put it out of sight, out of mind, we are actually devaluing people and not solving the problem.” Dr Rosevear then says that the billions of dollars spent on prisons would be better spent on drug intervention and education programs.

The doctor made this call in front of the federal Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek in the summit’s communities stream, being that he probably thought that the best person to consult was the federal Housing Minister. So the chosen 100 delegates  in the stream have split into 6 groups focusing on disadvantage common values, social inclusion, strong families,leadership structures and building community ownership. So each group was asked to to come up with on strong idea by the end of the day. This is how Australia is dealing with “the legalisation of some drugs”.

In conclusion this is how the world is dealing with “the legalisation of some drugs” which was the topic of this report. A lot had the same opinion which was to legalise drugs to reduce the level of violence and lower the number of people in prisons who are non violent.