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Drugs: A Big Problem in Criminal Justice
The problem of drug use in America is one that has been around for many years. However, with the recent passage of marijuana laws in states like Colorado, Oregon and California (to name just a few), the way the nation views drug use has shifted. Recreational marijuana use has become accepted in Colorado, where it is legal to buy and sell a substance that is still considered a schedule 1 narcotic by the federal government. In fact, in states like Colorado, there is a clear conflict between the state laws and the federal laws: the states says cannabis is legal, while the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) says it is still prohibited. Researchers would like to research the drug to better understand its medicinal qualities, but they are afraid of violating federal law, so do not. Thus, the problem of drugs and how to perceive them in the 21st century is a major problem in criminal justice today.
As James (2016) notes, “the dream of legal marijuana as it is being sold to the American public is that it will not only give states a chance to reap a tax windfall off of a drug millions of Americans already use; it will end the back-and-forth tussle among cops, users, and dealers, and shift police resources to more serious crimes.” Yet, that dream remains largely just that—a dream. Police in Colorado are still busting street dealers of marijuana...
Those who say legalization is working point to the numbers: a 98% decline in Washington and a 95% decline in Colorado in arrests for marijuana possession. Those numbers don’t reveal the other more sinister side of the drug issue: marijuana is not the only drug out there—and American culture is still conflicted about drug abuse in general (is it a mental health issue or a criminal issue?). Meanwhile more harmful drugs are pouring into the States: since the legalization of marijuana, the heroin trade has been booming. Miroff (2015) notes that “U.S. law enforcement agents seized 2,181 kilograms of heroin last year coming from Mexico, nearly three times the amount confiscated in 2009. The numbers for meth, cooked in Mexico and brought across the border, are even higher: “15,803 kilograms of the drug was seized along the border, up from 3,076 kilos in 2009” (Miroff, 2015). A three-hundred fold increase in heroin trafficking is a major problem and shows that a half-step measure to de-criminalize drugs while keeping others illegal only causes the traffickers to focus on that substance which is still most profitable on the black market. Thus, this problem is important to solve because…
References
James, T. (2016). The failed promise of legal pot. Retrieved from
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/legal-pot-and-the-black-market/481506/
Miroff, N. (2015). Losing marijuana business, Mexican cartels push heroin and meth.
Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/losing-marijuana-business-mexican-cartels-push-heroin-and-meth/2015/01/11/91fe44ce-8532-11e4-abcf-5a3d7b3b20b8_story.html?utm_term=.ba83c8a0f036
Roeder, O. (2015). Releasing drug offenders won’t end mass incarceration. Retrieved
from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/releasing-drug-offenders-wont-end-mass-incarceration/
Columbian Drug Trade If Americans know nothing else about Colombia, they know that it is a place where people grow and package cocaine for use on the world market. This is, of course, a highly biased view of the country because Colombians do many things other than make and sell drugs and most Colombians are not involved in the drug trade at all. However, it remains true that much of the world's
Drugs Marijuana in Depth THE NEUROSCIENCE OF THE DRUG Cannabis sativa (marijuana) is a plant that contains a chemical compound called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol is called THC for short. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (2010), smoking marijuana (which is the most common form of intake) causes the chemical THC to "rapidly pass from the lungs into the bloodstream, which carries the chemical to the brain and other organs throughout the body."
This despite how much money is being wasted on "the war on drugs." Making "war" militarily on a medical/social problem makes no sense. In addition to the psychological problems of individuals, social conditions contribute greatly to the problem. People who are alienated from society become addicted to drugs, as Sen. Robert Kennedy pointed out back in 1965. Solving the drug problem means "solving poverty and broken homes, racial discrimination
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Drug Abuse and Families Results from the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the latest survey available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, estimated that 21.8 million Americans, ages twelve and up, were current (past month) drug users. The figure represented an increase of .7% over the previous year. Families of substance abusers can find themselves in crisis, experiencing a range of emotions from helplessness to
In most cases, recreational drug use is seen as a victimless crime and a harmless activity. This attitude changes in the workplace if the drug use impairs performance to the detriment of other workers or if the work involves public safety, in which case tolerance for drug use drops significantly. Another reason why tolerance for some drug use is so high is because the attitude is a reaction to the