ollars in an effort to help rid the nation of illegal substances. It is by far one of America's most expensive projects. According to the National Review, America spends nearly seventy billion dollars per year on narcotic related operations. This money is spent on prisoners who are already in jail for related drug charges, the trial time of our judiciary in drug related cases, and the time and expense of over four hundred thousand policemen helping to fight the drug war. This money spent does not include the expenses for sponsoring and funding programs such as D.A.R.E and drug rehabilitation centers that use the twelve step program. A survey conducted by the Palm Beach Post referring to the drug war in America states "In the 50 years that the U.S. public has been asked to name the most important problem facing the nation, it is virtually unprecedented for any other social issue to appear at the top of the list."4 The legalization of narcotics is a raging issue among teenagers, parents, politicians, and economists. Some of these people feel that America should legalize narcotics and use the money that is spent on fighting the drug war on better political agendas such as education and health care reform. Some also feel that we have foughtthe drug war for many years, and we should stop, due the fact that drug usage has not had a significant decrease in the past 10 years. Narcotics should not be legalized due to the reasons that if narcotics were legalized, drug use would spread exponentially, which may lead to a substantial increase in drug abuse, crime, and many domestic problems.Economist Dr. Richard Gilbert, the president of the Canadian Urban Institute and has written extensively on both drug and urban issues in America. He believes drug business dealers cannot survive if dealers only sold to dealers, as well as dealers not being able to survive if they couldn't sell to the majority of inner-city residents. Furthermore, he believes in order for a drug business to thrive, there must be a ready source of customers. If drugs were legalized and sold under heavy restrictions, which include a minimum age requirement, this would produce revenue for the government as well as put illegal wholesale dealers out of business due to the customers buying the narcotics from a different legal source. A survey of 8098 Americans taken by the National Comorbidity Survey showed that 51% of males and females from the ages of 15-54 have abused illegal drugs more than once in their lives. When they were asked the reason for repeating their drug abuse, over 80% of those surveyed said it was due to the availability of the drug. In other words those, 80% of the 8098 surveyed would not have been repeat offenders of illegal drug use.had they not had a connection to get more. The availability of narcotics is one the reasons why we have repeat drug abusers. This is proven with the availability of cigarettes compared to the availability of heroin. Cigarettes contain nicotine, which is a highly addictive substance in tobacco that is poisonous in concentrated amounts. Anyone who is over eighteen can walk into a liquor shop or grocery store and purchase cigarettes. Those who are under the age of eighteen usually have older peers or strangers walking buy a liquor shop who will be asked to purchase cigarettes for them. Over 46 million Americans smoke, approximately 3,000,000 of those are teenagers and children. According to the National Clearing House of Drug and Alcohol, there are 7000 new smokers per day. There is no denying the fact that cigarettes are readily available to virtually anyone. Heroin is an opiod which starts off as opium and is refined many times to become and psychologically. Daily use for only a short time results in addiction. Heroin use is much more serious and deadly than cigarette use. An individual withdrawing from the high from heroin may experience lethargy, hallucination, convulsions that may lead to a shock or coma, and extreme mo

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Approximate Word count = 3247
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)