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The Official Blog for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Spanish 4362/Language 7313.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Drugs and Politics
So over the past years I've seen many south american governments allow legal drug use such as meth, coke, etc... I have a friend from Argentina that had told me about the legality of using such drugs without being arrested. I find it very interesting. He told me that it would save the government money and the government could spending it's money else where. Fighting drug lords can be very expensive for a government. Also the theory is that it will drive demand down as well as the price of doing drugs. I guess it's ment to discourage drug dealers from distributing. Sound a bit illogical to me. Anyway, I find this very troubling and detrimentive the morals and ideals of a government should represent. Anyway, I'm glad that our country hasn't given up on the war on drugs and hope that we never do.
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3 comments:
I'm going to play devil's advocate with you Mark and say that I actually would allow drugs to be legal in our country. Though, of course, I would have them controlled the same way alcohol and tobacco are controlled. No driving under the influence. No underage drug use. It would save the country a fortune on law enforcement and we could tax the crap out of it and get desperately needed funding for things like education. Now, you could argue with me and say that would be terrible to our citizens and to our society. However, Switzerland actually did legalize all drugs in their country and their government regulated it. It was a success. There were some overdoses and that really can't be helped but they knew where the majority of drug addicts were and the problem dissolved on its own. I think people are going to do what they're going to do. We might as well know who is doing it and keep our eye on them AND make money on them at the same time. Something to think about.
I think I'd have to agree with Catherine on this one. Not only would the amount of money being spent on the war on drugs be used more efficiently elsewhere, but we have to think of the backlash that the war on drugs provokes in other countries. Our government spends tons of money in Mexico for their war on drugs and it's caused the civil disorder and crime rate to significantly increase.
The real reason to make drugs legal is that it would be a huge blow to organized crime. The mofia in the US did not have a foothold until the 20's with prohibition. All of a sudden they had a market and they made bank. While some respectable families came out of that ie the Kennedies overall it is not good. So legalizing it, and yes definitely regulating it, would be a huge blow to this facet of crime. Not that there would not be some downsides to it but there are benefits, which is what makes this such a fun argument!
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