In recent years, Americans have referred to privacy as one of the basic human rights, something to be claimed by anyone, anywhere. United States citizens feel strongly about this and often tell other countries that they must honor their people's claims to privacy and personal freedom. Foreign leaders often disagree. They resent what they deem arrogant meddling by the United States. Leaders of the Soviet Union, for example, regard individual privacy as trivial when compared to the needs of the state. If the United States is to be persuasive in promoting freedom in other parts of the world, it must respect the privacy of its own citizens. Sometimes it is hard to do this because what goes on in people's private lives may seem offensive. But, according to U.S. traditions, there is a strong case to be made against legislating the private behavior of adults, so long as that behavior does not in turn vi

Examining the U.S. policy on marijuana on the basis of performance, one must judge it a miserable failure. The number of people who have smoked the drug at least once has grown from an uncounted few in the 1950s, when some of the strictest anti marijuana laws were imposed, to nearly 50 million today. During this period the federal government has made steadily increasing efforts to stop its production and importation, and seizures of marijuana in the ports has grown steadily. Elaborate and costly international police campaigns have been launched, and the number of drug arrests in the United States has increased. The federal budget for drug enforcement reflected in several agencies has gone above $1 billion a year. And yet the illegal trade in marijuana continues. Supplies are so plentiful that the price has actually come down. The response has been to redouble police efforts and hope that things will change. The result is that more money is spent on a failed policy, creating an ever-growing army of drug enforcers dedicated to keeping the policy alive. The illegal market for marijuana grows even faster than the police force, however, because the drug users are willing to pay more to get what they want than taxpayers are willing to pay to stop it. The drug police enjoy their work and are not going to quit. And why should they as long as their salaries are paid? The admission that the marijuana laws have failed will have to come from someone else- not from the police. Marijuana is a common weed, easier to produce than the bathtub gin of the Prohibition years. It is not surprising that thousands of "dealers" have been drawn into the marijuana business. Despite the great risks they face, including bullying by other dealers and the threat of arrest, they are attracted by the profits. The law cannot change the economics of this market because it operates outside the law. All the police can do is to make it risky to get into the marijuana business. This is supposed to drive out the less courageous dealers, reduce the amount of marijuana available, and inflate prices. But even by this measure, the police effort has failed. As mentioned earlier, the price of marijuana is declining. There are several ways in which the policy on marijuana imposed a burden on society. The obvious one is the cost of supporting the federal enforcement effort. Aside from this, there is a hard-to-measure but significant impact on society because the law creates a huge criminal class. It includes not just dealers who are out fro profit but a much larger group of users. Consider three major penalties for having such a large criminal class.

One argument made against the legalization of marijuana is that it damages not only the user but also innocent bystanders. This argument, like the one about protecting the user, has two party's. The first deals with physical injury and the second with spiritual health. The main physical threat to society is that users under the influence of a drug will crash a car or airplane, or lose

Some common words found in the essay are:
Drug Abuses, Soviet Union, Drug User's, Stuart Mill's, , marijuana laws, law enforcement, quality life, federal budget, marijuana business, threat society, legalizing marijuana, driving influence, criminal class, willing pay,
Approximate Word count = 2053
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)