This Is Your Country On Drugs Essay

In the essay “America’s Unjust Drug War” by Michael Huemer, Huemer discusses the facts and opinions around the subject on whether or not the recreational use of drugs should be banned by law. Huemer believes that the American government should not prohibit the use of drugs. He brings up the point on drugs and how they harm the users and the people in the user’s life; he proves that the prohibition on drugs in unjust. Huemer believes that drug prohibition is an injustice to Americans’ natural rights and questions why people can persucute those who do drugs.

The use of what are now considered illegal drugs date back as far as 300 BC in many different places of the world. Historically, it has not only been criminals that used illegal drugs. Drugs were used for many things including medicinal purposes, spiritual enlightenment, rituals, as well as for recreation. They were also used by many different cultures, age groups, and social classes. There was a time when the only thing around to alleviate physical pain either from illness, injury, or even during the process of dying were some of these drugs. There were no illegal drugs in the United States until the mid-nineteenth century. This is an essay on 12 of these illegal drugs individually as reported on in the History Channels documentary “Hooked, Illegal Drugs and How They Got That Way”.

Drugs have had a noteworthy effect on American history since the establishing of the main English state at Jamestown in 1607. Indeed, even as drugs, lawful or not, have added to the development of the country 's economy, Americans have attempted to discover approaches that point of quarantine drugs’ negative impacts on society without producing negative reactions of their own. Also, if drugs have existed since the start, so have drug issues or addictions. Thus have undertakings to take care of those drug issues.

In the 1960s, drug culture was popularized through music and mass media, in our current society we still find this relevant. Although we are more knowledgeable about drugs and alcohol, “an estimated 208 million people internationally consume illegal drugs.” The question is why do we conform to a society that is dependent on such substances? Perhaps drug culture is still present due to the references we witness on a daily basis. Witnessing this has resulted in drugs being a constant norm in society, the recently published novel, The Other Wes Moore; addresses drug culture.

The war on Drugs played a heavy role in minority American society. It affected policing and most importantly the American minority people. The war on drugs started by President Nixon and up until President Bush was a disaster that affected America with high incarceration and high recidivism rates for low level and non-violent drug offenses that mainly targeted minorities in America. The war on drugs was a massive American failure that mainly affected minorities. President Obama and his drug reform alongside the American public’s strong opinion to switch towards marijuana reform which we see in places like Colorado and Washington has caused the war on drugs to lose steam. The American public’s decision for drug reform is no surprise after nearly 40 years of the unsuccessful war on drugs.

Drugs have a particularly interesting history within the United States. Many of the well-known and highly addictive narcotics of today like heroin, cocaine, and opium, were previously used in a variety of mundane ways. They were present in drinks and in health tonics/elixirs for treatment of an array of illnesses and as pain relief (“What is Cocaine?”, 2016). Perhaps the most consumed soft drink of all time, Coca Cola, derived its name from the coca plant – giving a glimpse into its cocaine containing past. However, it was not soon after, that drugs began to lose their credibility about their effectiveness in food and medicine. By the early 1900s, they were

The War on Drugs, like the war on Terrorism, is a war that America may not be able to afford to win. For over forty years the United States has been fighting the War on Drugs and there is no end in sight. It has turned into a war that is about politics and economics rather than about drugs and criminals. The victims of this war are numerous; but perhaps they are not as numerous as those who benefit from the war itself.

In Australia there is a multitude of medication available to us to increase our quality of life that are typically used appropriately in the community. However, there has been a growing number of individuals misusing pharmaceutical drugs and this has now become an emerging public issue in Australia and overseas. This research will be based on the misuse of the following pharmaceutical drugs: opioids, benzodiazepines and codeine. All of which have the potential to become an addiction. The extent to which these drugs are misused by individuals will range from those intentionally using these drug for recreational reasons, to those who are unware that they are misusing the drugs due to inappropriate prescribing.

LSD was a significant symbol in the culture of the 1960s and largely contributed to the counterculture of the time. Its large use during this time period eventually led to the prohibition of the drug. Although usage of LSD has gone down in recent years, it is a still a major drug in the party scene, most notably among the younger crowds who like to experiment with different types of drugs. This drug is currently illegal to use whether medicinally or recreationally in the United States due to its high potential for abuse and danger. Users tend to take this drug due to the hallucinations that the drug gives. This is, however, quite dangerous and can lead to very bad consequences. The effects of the drug known as LSD are one of the most potent, emotion changing and sensory changing drugs in the world. LSD is a very dangerous drug that affects the person physically and mentally and has very dangerous consequences for using

Drug legalization is an enduring question that presently faces our scholars. This issue embraces two positions: drugs should not be legalized and drugs should be legalized. These two positions contain an array of angles that supports each issue. This brief of the issues enables one to consider the strengths and weakness of each argument, become aware of the grounds of disagreement and agreement and ultimately form an opinion based upon the positions stated within the articles. In the article “Against the Legalization of Drugs”, by James Q. Wilson, the current status of drugs is supported. Wilson believes if a drug such as heroin were legalized there would be no financial or medical reason to avoid heroin usage;

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide also known as LSD or Acid is a hallucinogenic/psychedelic drug that has mind-altering effects on the human body. This paper focuses on the attempted therapeutic, medicinal, recreational, etc. applications of LSD with the goal of “curing” or helping to mitigate some other undesired effect. Use of LSD is not without its own risks so a portion of this paper will also focus on potential problems with short/long-term LSD treatment applications. This paper is by no means cumulative or holistic in its approach to this subject and seeks only to inform the reader on an aspect of legal applications of otherwise illegal drugs.

Drug use in America is one of the major issues we face and the problem has skyrocketed over the past three decades. Heroin and painkiller addictions exceed all other countries. It is important that we address some of the causes that lead to the abuse, how to treat the abuse, and how to prevent the distribution of illegal prescription drugs.

The current hot-topic debate about the legalization of marijuana for medical exposes the long lasting debate about the economic viability of prohibiting certain kind of drugs considered illicit. Many social costs to society are attributable to illicit drugs, along with tobacco, alcohol, and guns. In fact, each of these vices is allegedly responsible for $200 billion annual expenditure in social costs of the USA (Donohue, 2010). Interestingly, all these commodities mentioned above have common characteristics: a sizeable proportion of consumers responsibly use each of them hence virtually zero social externality; and a trivial subset of society individuals irresponsibly use each of these commodity to create high social externalities. The

The so-called “War on Drugs,” as declared by the Nixon administration in the signing of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, marked the beginning of the current era of mandatory minimum sentencing, racism, privatized prisons, and a powerful constituency that profits as a result of the prohibition of drugs. Psychoactive substances have been apart of the human experience as long as humans have walked the earth. There is little hope that drug production will ever be curtailed, so long as there is a demand; a demand that has remained steady even though it has been forty years since the beginning of said war. As Judge James P. Gray from the Superior Court of Orange County has so plainly put it: “Where did this policy

The “War on Drugs” is the name given to the battle of prohibition that the United States has been fighting for over forty years. And it has been America’s longest war. The “war” was officially declared by President Richard Nixon in the 1970’s due to the abuse of illegitimate drugs. Nixon claimed it as “public enemy number one” and enacted laws to fight the importation of narcotics. The United States’ War on Drugs began in response to cocaine trafficking in the late 1980’s. As the war continues to go on, winning it hardly seems feasible. As stated by NewsHour, the National Office of Drug Control Policy spends approximately nineteen billion dollars a year trying to stop the drug trade. The expenses shoot up, indirectly, through crime,