Legalization of drugs is a very controversial topic that is being discussed in the United States. Currently there is an intense debate to legalize marijuana as a medicine. To most people, legalizing drugs seems like something insane. They probably ask how can they legalize something that the government furiously tries to eradicate. The problem is exactly in what the government tries to do. Eliminate drugs. The drug problem will never go away. A drug free society is something that will never happen. The amount of money made from illegal drugs is so great that the police have no force to fight this situation.

Pro legalization advocates say the drug war has failed. They claim legalization will reduce the huge costs of drug enforcement, prosecution, and imprisonment. The anti- legalization advocates say that legalization will increase crime and cause more addiction. They also say that the war on drugs is a success. The question at issue arises from these two different viewpoints. Will legalization of drugs be more beneficial than continuing the drug war?

Joseph McNamara is a former Police Chief of San Jose and other large cities. He is a research fellow of the Hoover

America. Ed. Robert Emmet Long. New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1993. 203-212.

the United States." Legalizing Drugs. Ed. Karin L. Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc, 1996. 32-48.

Unsuccessful." Infotrac College Edition. March 16, 1996.

McNamara questions the way society acts towards drug users. People who have been punished for drug use don't have the chance to rehabilitate themselves. There are drug free workplaces where nobody with a drug record can get a job. There is drug free housing. Another problem McNamara mentions is the enormous corruption. The same Drug enforcement agent that arrested General Noriega, was arrested for stealing 720,000 in laundered drug money. The corruption has reached in the federal law enforcement. The police are corrupted and the legal system is paralyzed. The FBI and the Coast Guard had to admit to corruption.

In an article in U.S. News and World Report magazine, Mortimer B. Zuckerman editor of the magazine, discusses the problems that drug legalization will cause on society. He states that America has not lost the drug war. In 1979 about 25 million people had tried drugs. In 1997 the figure decreased to 11 million. Zuckerman says America's drug war caused this decline with stricter drug laws, more societal disapproval, and more information on the negative effect drugs causes. The more dangerous problem with legalization is with teens. Drug use has increased threefold among teens in the past five years from 1997. Legalization advocates say that legalization will not increase the number of addicts because if somebody wants drugs they can buy it now. Zuckerman shows that in a research, less than 50 percent of people under 22 believe they could obtain cocaine fairly or very easily. Only 39 percent of the adult population said they could get cocaine. Legalization will double or triple the number of people who would have access to drugs and who would use them. Legalizing drugs will make them available for adults only. The problem according to Zuckerman is that since we have not been able to keep alcohol and tobacco away from teens, how can we keep the new legalized drugs away from them. In another study 60 to 70 percent of New Jersey and California students declared that the "fear of getting caught by authorities was a major reason why they did not use drugs."

Califano, Joseph A. "Fictions and Facts About Drug Legalization."

Legalization is Seductive and Completely Wrong." U.S News and World Report 24 February 1997: 68.

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