The United States Senate needs to decriminalization drugs.
I think it’s important to address the issue of decriminalization of drugs in the United States because many prisons are overcrowded with most of the inmates being in on minor drug-related charges, such as possession. This causes two issues in society. The first one is that it costs taxpayer money to house, cloth, and feed inmates. The more people in prison the more money taxpayers must pay.
The second issue is that putting people in prison who have drug addictions, isn’t helping their addictions. Instead of getting them help that they need, they are being locked up, making it so that when they are released, they will go back to the drug of their preference, essentially starting the cycle over again. If someone does have a drug problem, they need rehabilitation, not a prison sentence. Prison doesn’t give people adequate resources to combat their addictions.
The reason why I want to explore this topic is because my hometown is currently has a severe drug epidemic at the moment that corresponds with the drug trends in the United States. I spent a year interning at my local city court my senior year, and during that time I spent some time in drug court. The judge that I was shadowing would offer up a local program called TASK to defendants. This program would offer defendants the options to go to rehab instead of serving a sentence in prison, considering that they follow all the conditions of the programs. I once asked the judge why she offered up this option, and she explained that if they successfully completed the program the chances of them, coming back is less than if they just served a sentence. I always thought that this was a very interesting concept and I wanted to use this paper to explore more options further.
The misconception regarding the decriminalization of drugs is that many people believe that this will increase the drug use in society since people know that they won’t be punished for it anymore, but statistics from other countries who have decriminalized drugs, which I will present in my actual paper show that drug rates have actually decreased significantly in those countries.
With my classmates as an audience, I think I am mainly in a position to convert them to a belief on the issue, solely because the idea of decriminalizing all drugs is not a common belief that many people have. When people think of decriminalizing drugs, it’s usually just the legalization of marijuana. While it is a tough concept to sell, I think that it is possible to do so.
Research Questions
How many people are incarcerated on drug offenses in United States Prisons?
What are the costs associated with incarcerating people and how much of taxpayers dollars are contributing to this?
What would be the effects of decriminalizing drugs on society?