Drugs can bring pleasure; Drugs can be dangerous. They should be in the hands of doctors, pharmacists and regulated retailers, not criminals. Drug legalization would make drug use safer, but the greatest impact of the transition to a regulated drug market is that it would end the chaos, violence and corruption caused by criminal networks that engage in illicit drug trafficking. The war on drugs has been fought. He was lost. It is high time for reform. To the extent that prohibition reduces drug use, the effect is likely to be less for hard drugs than for marijuana. This is because the demand for cocaine and heroin appears to be cheaper. From this point of view, the legalization of cocaine or heroin is even stronger than marijuana; For hard drugs, prohibition mainly increases the price, which increases the resources spent on the black market while having minimal impact on consumption.

The same condition applies to hard drugs. Media accounts focus on users who perform poorly because they are dramatic or newsworthy. Yet millions of people are at risk of being arrested, raising prices, contaminating and suffering the whims of black markets to buy these products, suggesting that people are profiting from their use. Legalization would free up billions of dollars the government is currently spending on police, courts, and corrections to wage the war on drugs, and generate significant tax revenue. The money saved could then be spent on drug education, addiction treatment and enforcement initiatives targeting more serious crimes. Ultimately, even though hard drugs pose greater health risks than marijuana, we cannot rationally prohibit them without comparing the harms of prohibition to the harms of the drugs themselves. In a society that legalizes drugs, users are only confronted with the negative aspects of use. Under the prohibition, they also risk being arrested, fined, losing their professional licenses, etc. Prohibition clearly harms those who use despite prohibition. In November 2012, Colorado and Washington state passed voting initiatives to legalize marijuana, making the United States the first country in the world to legalize the commercial production, sale and use of marijuana. As of June 2021, 18 states and the District of Columbia legalized marijuana, adding it to alcohol and nicotine as the third legal drug for adults. Alcohol and nicotine are the leading causes of preventable disease and death in the United States.

In contrast, the negative health effects of some drugs are much milder than those of alcohol. Cannabis, for example, when taken in a form that does not involve smoking, appears to have much milder health effects:3 Second, the war on drugs cannot be won. People take drugs in the hope of feeling joy and relieving their distress. These desires do not disappear. People who want drugs are also not deterred by criminal sanctions: a 2014 Interior Ministry report found “no clear link between a country`s tough enforcement against drug possession and the level of drug use in that country.” It is also virtually impossible to stop the supply of such profitable products – a kilo of cocaine can be bought in Colombia for $1,500, but is sold on US roads for 40 times more. Law enforcement suffers from the “balloon effect”: the successful compression of production in one area only moves it to another location. It is true that we know from many ancient societies that they used drugs for medicinal and ritual purposes, but also for leisure and pleasure 7. From the ancient Greeks to Sigmund Freud`s cocaine use, the history of human societies has always been a history of drugs. Today, there is a movement in many societies towards the liberalization of drug laws. This can be either legalization of certain drugs (drug trafficking and use become legal) or decriminalization of their use (the drug is still not freely available, but its use is not considered a criminal offence; instead, it is regulated and controlled by other means). Often, decriminalization is only proposed for the use of a drug by individuals, while drug trafficking would remain a criminal offence.

Drugs could be classified into any category, based on the principle that substances that may cause more harm should be more restricted. Heroin, for example, would likely only be intended for controlled use, while cannabis could be distributed in licensed establishments and sales. One problem is that you could justify everything with such an argument. Theft has certainly existed for as long as human societies have existed, and so have murders, rapes, wars and many other evils. Does that mean that we have the right to continue doing these things, or that we should support them because they have always existed? That doesn`t make sense. But perhaps the best reason to legalize hard drugs is that people who want to use them have the same freedom to determine their own well-being as those who use alcohol or marijuana or whatever. In a free society, the assumption must always be that individuals, not the government, can decide what is in their own interest. Not surprisingly, the broader international implications of drug legalization have also gone largely unnoticed.

Here, too, there are still long questions that need to be answered. Given the long-standing situation in the United States. How would a decision to legalize drugs as the main sponsor of international drug control measures affect other countries? What will happen to the overall regime of multilateral conventions and bilateral agreements? Will each nation have to comply with a new set of rules? If not, what would happen? Would more permissive countries suddenly be flooded with drugs and addicts, or would drug traffickers focus on countries where stricter restrictions have kept profits higher? This is not an abstract issue. The Netherlands` liberal drug policy has attracted an influx of “drug tourists” from neighboring countries, as has the now-abandoned city of Zurich after the now-abandoned experiment that allowed an open drug market in the so-called “needle park.” And while it is conceivable that rich countries can mitigate the worst consequences of drug legalization through extensive public drug prevention and treatment programs, what about the poorest countries? Data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show the gap between the use of legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco and increasingly marijuana) and illicit drugs. Among Americans 12 and older, about 51 percent have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days, while about 21 percent have used tobacco. The percentage of those who used marijuana is almost 12%, which is considerably higher than those who used opioids (1%) or cocaine (0.7%). It is becoming increasingly clear to the public that the war on drugs has failed and that a new approach is needed. In the United Kingdom, a survey found that more than two-thirds believe that criminal sanctions are ineffective in deterring drug users or traffickers. Another poll found that twice as many people support cannabis legalization as they do oppose it. Fifty-five percent of Americans support decriminalization — the elimination of criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of drugs — and last November, Oregon voters approved Election Measure 110, making it the first state to move toward decriminalization. A regulated recreational drug market would provide states with tax revenue that could be used to better control drugs or support addicts. A 1994 document estimates marijuana tax revenues in the United States at only between $3 billion and $9 billion per year.1 In comparison, the budget of the U.S.

Department of Education in 1992 was about $30 billion; and in 1993, tobacco tax revenues in the United States were about $12 billion.2 Opponents of more permissive regimes doubt that black market activities and related problems will disappear or even decline sharply. However, to answer this question, it is still necessary to know the specificities of the regulatory system, in particular the conditions of supply. When drugs are sold openly on a commercial basis and prices are close to production and distribution costs, the potential for illegal undercutting seems rather slim.