When you think of drugs that should be legalized you probably think of marijuana, but should we stop there? After we legalize soft drugs like marijuana, I believe another point of contention for legalization should be hard drugs like cocaine. I know you are probably thinking “O look just another hippie from California who just wants to smoke weed and snort cocaine”, but hear me out. Every year we spent billions of dollars trying to reduce/eliminate the use of illegal drugs in the US, while also imprisoning thousands of people, this money could have been spent somewhere else or helping people in need. I strongly believe the US should take a new stance when it comes to fighting drugs and instead of focusing on arresting the actual victims, it should start focusing on the rehabilitating aspect.
When we look into the history of criminalization, many like me have realized that the War on Drugs, a proclamation which started with the Nixon Administration, has failed. In 1982 there about 100,000 arrest due to cocaine/heroin (Mind you this was a decade after the war on drugs.), then around 1987 the number of arrests darted up to about 750,000. In the light of these facts, some anti-drugs activist may argue the drug war was successful since it achieved its goal (criminalization). However, the fundamentals in which it was created was not successful, meaning hard drugs like heroin is still widely used and even more dangerous today than in any period in history. In fact, the War on Drugs created even more problems and gave way to a new drug called crack.
Crack is basically a hardened form of cocaine which became popular during the 1980s and 1990s. It became popular because of how easy it was to get high off of, that meant the price of getting high was lower with crack than cocaine. While it was cheaper to get high off crack the reason it became popular was not only due to that factor. Some may argue that the crackdown on cocaine led to the increase in price for cocaine, so in pursuit of a "better" alternative drug dealers made a new form of cocaine which was easier to get high off.
Cocaine has numerous negative effects on the body and can even cause death this is a characteristic not only found in cocaine, but also in cigarettes and prescription drugs. Note cigarettes and prescription drugs can be obtained legally, so why is that? Some may argue these substances are less dangerous and are harder to overdose on, but the same people also neglect to point out deaths caused by cigarettes or prescription drugs which when compared to deaths caused by hard drugs cocaine and heroin are almost laughable.
Even at the low rate, death related to cocaine has been steadily rising from less than 5,000 to 10,000 deaths over a couple of years. This is mainly due to, again the War on Drugs, because hard drugs like cocaine are illegal and not regulated many try to add chemicals to keep people hooked these chemicals can sometimes be even more dangerous than the drug itself. The War on Drugs also drew many similarities from the ban on alcohol in 1920, especially relating to mafias (known as gangs today) which grew due to the demand for illegal substances. This is obviously not beneficial for both the community and the country.
All-in-all criminalization of hard drugs like cocaine is not helping America, it just creates an opportunity for more and more dangerous drugs to be introduced into the United States from places like Mexico. It also increases crimes, gangs, and destroys families. The way the US is approaching this dilemma is not working, what we need to do is stop criminalizing these victims and help them get their own life together. And then truly will we succeed. While we may never get people to stop using harmful drugs we can at least reduce the percentage.
