Being someone who has had their lives destroyed by drugs (albeit legal ones) the problem is made many times worse by drug laws. I have the unfortunate circumstance of interacting with drug users on a near daily basis and I can tell you that prohibition is the cause of nearly every social ill around drugs.
1) People with drug arrests are unable to integrate back into society.
I've been very lucky with this. Despite having a legal drug problem, getting drugs that are only legal for some people creates huge price problems. Drugs that cost $30 for a precription of 90 cost 1 us dollar per milligram. A prescription of 90 perc 10s can be 30 or 40 dollars and be worth 900 on the street. Coming up with that money every single day hurts society and the people involved. Petty theft (boosting), stealing food, prostitution and associated diseases and for many users, needles (which through efficiency helps with the cost). All of this leads to arrests and when the user stops he finds he can't get a grant to go to school and nobody wants to hire him. He is stuck in a perpetual state of poverty and will often go right back to drugs because of how discouraged he is. It turns into a revolving door at the welfare, the prisons and drug treatment clinics.
2) Health problems and diseases
You show me a IV drug user and I'll show you someone with Hep-c, abscesses, problems with the heart valves... All of these problems associated not with drugs, but the cut and dirty needles both of which go back to the illegal nature of the drugs.
Then there are the people who are prescribed these drugs. They are lured into selling their pain meds by the huge amounts of easy money.
3) The corrupting power of drug money
Imagine you are a pain patient getting 90 oxy 80's prescribed per month and you figure you can get through the pain for 8 hours each day or play with the schedule or whatever because you know the every pill you sell is as much as $80 usd. You are looking at over 2 thousand dollars for maybe $100 worth of pills. Maybe you can't work because of the pain and you're broke and can really use a couple of thousand dollars a month and all you have to do is sell a few of your pills. Drug MONEY is very corrupting. I swear I knew 70 year old women who would sell a large number of their pills each month to make ends meet. This is just the illegal shit. Then there is the drug treatment people. In my area the gov will pay $75 per person per hour for "group therapy" with 1 counselor and 25 drug users (half of which are under the influence of drugs or sleeping) for 3 hours. The way they get the patients to cooperate is by holding their daily dose of methadone over their heads (I KNOW this for a fact because I have worked in a methadone clinic). There obviously needs to be gov insurance for non working drug users, but the system they have now is RIPE with abuse. There is also the idea that this "treatment" is cheaper then prison so they just put up with it. No private insurance would ever pay this money year after year for "patients" who never stop using drugs. I know of people (and it's a LARGE percentage, not isolated cases) who have been in this treatment modality for 10 years and still use as much drugs as they day they walked in. Prohibition makes this the norm.
I could go on and on and on. America will NEVER solve it's drug problem until prohibition is ended and sensible policies, especially education are implemented.
Much of this is actually the FDA's fault. Many people assume that legal drugs are safe because they have the gov stamp of approval. A large number of speed users and opiate users started off on "safe" prescription drugs. Users assumed that the gov would protect them from unsafe drugs and that any prescription drug has been tested and is safe and non-addicting. I know I did. Now I know that FDA approval just means a drug company paid the government money.
Chris
1) People with drug arrests are unable to integrate back into society.
I've been very lucky with this. Despite having a legal drug problem, getting drugs that are only legal for some people creates huge price problems. Drugs that cost $30 for a precription of 90 cost 1 us dollar per milligram. A prescription of 90 perc 10s can be 30 or 40 dollars and be worth 900 on the street. Coming up with that money every single day hurts society and the people involved. Petty theft (boosting), stealing food, prostitution and associated diseases and for many users, needles (which through efficiency helps with the cost). All of this leads to arrests and when the user stops he finds he can't get a grant to go to school and nobody wants to hire him. He is stuck in a perpetual state of poverty and will often go right back to drugs because of how discouraged he is. It turns into a revolving door at the welfare, the prisons and drug treatment clinics.
2) Health problems and diseases
You show me a IV drug user and I'll show you someone with Hep-c, abscesses, problems with the heart valves... All of these problems associated not with drugs, but the cut and dirty needles both of which go back to the illegal nature of the drugs.
Then there are the people who are prescribed these drugs. They are lured into selling their pain meds by the huge amounts of easy money.
3) The corrupting power of drug money
Imagine you are a pain patient getting 90 oxy 80's prescribed per month and you figure you can get through the pain for 8 hours each day or play with the schedule or whatever because you know the every pill you sell is as much as $80 usd. You are looking at over 2 thousand dollars for maybe $100 worth of pills. Maybe you can't work because of the pain and you're broke and can really use a couple of thousand dollars a month and all you have to do is sell a few of your pills. Drug MONEY is very corrupting. I swear I knew 70 year old women who would sell a large number of their pills each month to make ends meet. This is just the illegal shit. Then there is the drug treatment people. In my area the gov will pay $75 per person per hour for "group therapy" with 1 counselor and 25 drug users (half of which are under the influence of drugs or sleeping) for 3 hours. The way they get the patients to cooperate is by holding their daily dose of methadone over their heads (I KNOW this for a fact because I have worked in a methadone clinic). There obviously needs to be gov insurance for non working drug users, but the system they have now is RIPE with abuse. There is also the idea that this "treatment" is cheaper then prison so they just put up with it. No private insurance would ever pay this money year after year for "patients" who never stop using drugs. I know of people (and it's a LARGE percentage, not isolated cases) who have been in this treatment modality for 10 years and still use as much drugs as they day they walked in. Prohibition makes this the norm.
I could go on and on and on. America will NEVER solve it's drug problem until prohibition is ended and sensible policies, especially education are implemented.
Much of this is actually the FDA's fault. Many people assume that legal drugs are safe because they have the gov stamp of approval. A large number of speed users and opiate users started off on "safe" prescription drugs. Users assumed that the gov would protect them from unsafe drugs and that any prescription drug has been tested and is safe and non-addicting. I know I did. Now I know that FDA approval just means a drug company paid the government money.
Chris