Drugs should be treated in the same way by the law. The population that uses drugs may be more likely to engage in criminal activity, true, but causation does not imply causality, in other words, drug use may be a common behavior adopted by individuals in crime-ridden areas, which are filled with persons who do not mind violating the law. But the drugs themselves do not increase crime any more than wearing baggy pants or adopting a 'gangster' fashion style causes a person to act in a criminal fashion.
The way that drug criminalization is defended in relation to adolescents is that drug abuse is a risk to their health. But drug experimenters actually score higher on tests of psychological health than abstainers or heavy users (78). Husak writes, why should putting your health at risk be criminal? After all, he points out that the Food and Drug Administration makes the selling, but not the consumption of tainted foodstuffs illegal. Here, his analogy begins to collapse, however, because it is illegal to ride one's bike without a helmet in many states, or to drive without wearing a seatbelt. Also, the consumption of
7/8 of hard drug users (cocaine, heroin) are never apprehended, and the jails are already overstuffed with drug users (48). Even the law itself is bitterly ironic -- the more potent the drug, the less one needs to get high, yet the more drug in a user's possession, regardless of potency, the more serious the crime. Emphasizing legal policy and a policing policy that targets the demand rather than the supply side of drug use seems to create more injustice than it promotes. It does not deter users or promote the well-being of American citizens. Even if abandoning the
war on drugs from a supply side may be unlikely, targeting the demand side with offers of
treatment, not threats of
prison, seems like a more rational approach after
reading this book.
Works Cited
Husak, Douglas. (2002). Legalize This!: The Case for Decriminalizing Drugs. New York:
Verso.
