Pros/cons of drug legalization-marijuana and beyond

Also, the paper argues against legalization of recreational drugs such marijuana, giving various arguments such as increased consumer rate, increased health problems, and exposure to other hard drugs in an attempt to support the claims raised. The research concludes with a paragraph that sums the arguments for and against the legalization of recreational substances as presented in the paper. Should recreational substances be decriminalized or legalized? Which of the drugs? Drug prohibition has a long history and still remains to be a major challenge in relation to controlling substance abuse. Drugs such as tobacco and alcohol fall under legal recreational drugs and other recreational drugs like Cannabis, Psychedelics Mushrooms, Barbiturates, Cocaine, Heroin, Painkillers, LSD and others remain highly prohibited. Despite the fact that the application of some of these substances has had a decline over the years, new substances have been launched and accepted in the drug market today, despite the war against illicit drugs.

This includes money that could be collected through issuing licenses, taxation from individual income as well as payroll taxes and new investors in the industry. For instance, the legalization of marijuana in Washington and Colorado and countries such as Canada has demonstrated increased federal taxes and fees based on its medical and recreational use (Ekins and Henchman, 2016). This can be attributed to the fact that making recreational substances such as cannabis legal positively impacts job creation and passive income generation. Thus, this is not only beneficial for the community and the marijuana industry, but also the government through taxation of the use of recreation substances like cannabis. This is evident in the case of cigarettes and alcohol that have generated massive income for the government and the drug industry for decades.

This will make it easy for consumers to acquire drugs like the case of tobacco and alcohol, hence minimizing the need for consumers to use violence to support their habits (Morris, 2018). This will also create employment opportunities and income generation for the community, hence reducing cases of crime and violence. Also, this will potentially affect cartels through diminishing illegal production, supply, and application of illicit drugs such as cannabis and crimes related to these activities. This will allow focus on other violent crimes and highly control the use of some of these illicit drugs among minors. Increased Safety in Illicit Drugs Proponents in support for legalization of illicit drugs argue that making these drugs illegal, makes it difficult to ensure consumer safety such as warning labels, manufacture accountability, instruction sheets among others.

Harms of Drug Legalization Increased Consumption This is among the top worries of legalizing recreation drugs such as cannabis because of the possibility of reporting an increased number of new users. Legalizing these drugs will result in various marketing campaigns among corporates as a result of introducing new consumers to that were afraid of using drugs during criminalization. Also, arguments against legalization support the perspective that this will result in people trying this drug and others due to easy access and increased social approval (DeAngelo, 2016). This might result in massive addiction and dependency among users resulting in altered behaviors and personality among users. This will result in millions of addicts in need of treatment due to the abuse and increased supply of drugs.

Thus, with the legalization of recreational cannabis and beyond could result in a society of addicts with harmful behaviors associated with various substance use (Wilkinson et al, 2016). It is thus, evident that the legalization of recreations drugs such as marijuana and beyond involves both benefits and harm to individuals and society, hence calling for effective decision making. In conclusion, the use of recreational drugs has been available since ancient times where drugs such as marijuana were used for various stimulation and medical reasons. However, due to various effects related to these drugs, some recreational drugs such as LSD, DMT, Cannabis, and others are considered illegal today. While there are various advantages that come with the legalization of drugs such as marijuana and beyond, there are also harms associated with these substances.