Drugs in Society: Illegal Drugs vs. Legal drugs

***The graph above shows the initiates of illicit drug usage.***

Drugs can be viewed in many ways in our society. Drugs can be viewed as nonfood chemicals that alter the way a person thinks, feels, functions, or behaves. This includes everything from prescription medications, to illegal chemicals like heroin, to popular and widely available substances like alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. A wide variety of laws, regulations, and government agencies exist to control the possession, sale, and use of drugs. Different drugs are held to different standards based on their perceived dangers and usefulness; a fact that sometimes leads to disagreement and controversy.

Illegal drugs are drugs that “currently have no standard or accepted medical use in the United States, such as heroin, LSD, and marijuana” (Smith, 2009, p.2). It is illegal to buy, sell, possess, and use these drugs except for research purposes. These types of drugs are only given to certified researchers (Smith, p. 3). On the other hand, we have a category of drugs that are classified as Legal drugs, which are not forbidden by the law. However, legal drug usage may be restricted. For example, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have stated that they control the use of legal psychoactives which are drugs that alert mood swings that have a potential for substance abuse. These drugs, which many of you have heard include narcotics, depressants, and stimulants which are only available with a prescription.

There is a huge controversy over illegal drugs especially marijuana. I read an article called U.S. Eases Stance on Medical Marijuana by Carrie Johnson, which talked about legalizing medical marijuana. There is a huge controversy on this issue. In the article, the Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. stated on Monday for prosecutors to “back away from pursuing cases against medical marijuana patients, signaling a broad policy shift that drug reform advocates interpret as the first step toward legalization of the drug” (Johnson, p.1). This policy told law enforcement to avoid catching criminals dealing with Marijuana but rather focus on criminals that violate other laws. There are many views on whether legalizing medical Marijuana is necessary or not. My view about legalizing marijuana is that we should legalize it. We should require medical prescriptions from physicians to allow patients that really need to use it. I really think we should legalize it because having it illegal doesn’t prevent people from using it anyway. Some people need marijuana due to medical reasons. Having it illegal doesn’t prevent criminals from using it; it just takes away the benefit of it from the people that really do need it. In fact, Pakistan Times stated in an article; legalizing medical marijuana will help treat cancer patients and will open doors for many other drugs being legalized (Altaf, p.1).

Here are some Statistic done by the National Teen Organization:

"According to the 1998 National Household Survey on Teen Drug Abuse, nearly ten percent of teens between the ages of twelve and seventeen used illegal drugs - a number less than 11.4 percent from just the year prior – including marijuana (8.3%), cocaine (0.8%) and inhalants (1.1%) (SAMHSA, 1998). Statistics for 2002 reflect a slight drop in teenage drug usage to 8.3 percent for overall consumption of all illicit drugs. Still heading the list as most commonly used drug for troubled teens was marijuana (75% of all teen users) followed by cocaine (0.9%) and marijuana combined with one or more other drugs (20%). Cigarettes were found to be a strong precursor for troubled teens to who used illicit drugs, representing about eight times the number to those teens who smoked (48.1%) and those teens who did not (6.2%)".