Drug Legalization Effects

Data are from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health from 2004 to 2011. Survey data include self-reported information on respondents` drug use, frequency of use, and questions on the assessment of substance abuse or substance abuse against the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition. The authors controlled for age, sex, race or ethnicity, smoking, urban residence, family income, marital status, education, university enrolment and employment status. They also controlled state beer taxes, unemployment rates, average personal income, and median household income. Data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show the gap between the use of legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco and increasingly marijuana) and illegal drugs. Among Americans 12 years of age and older, about 51 percent have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days, while about 21 percent have used tobacco. The percentage who used marijuana is nearly 12%, much higher than those who use opioids (1%) or cocaine (0.7%). The Institute of Behaviour and Health has proposed a strategy for the collection, analysis and annual reporting of sustainable and systematic annual reports on the health, safety and other consequences of marijuana use and the legalization of marijuana. IBH is calling on the U.S. Congress to appoint the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to establish an independent scientific committee to oversee the impact of changes in marijuana policy. This committee would collect, analyze and report on the impact of marijuana use and changes in marijuana policy, and recommend priorities for research in this area.

The full IBH report on this strategy is available here. Therefore, the results appear mixed. But perhaps more importantly, the number of people undergoing drug treatment increased by 20% in the first seven years after the legalization of drugs in Portugal and has remained stable ever since. Although the alternative to legalization usually emerges when public fear of drugs and despair of existing policies are at their highest, it never seems to disappear long from the radar screen of the media. Periodic incidents — such as the heroin-induced death of a wealthy young Couple in New York in 1995 or then-surgeon general Jocelyn Elders` remark in 1993 that legalization could be beneficial and should be investigated — guarantee this. The importance of many of those who have advocated for legalization at various times — such as William F. Buckley, Jr., Milton Friedman, and George Shultz — also helps. But every time the question of legalization arises, the same arguments for and against are dusted off and produced, so we don`t have a clearer understanding of what it might mean and what the implications might be. That Bill Clinton “inhaled” when he tried marijuana as a student was about what the last presidential campaign came closest to the drug problem. However, the current one could be very different.

For the fourth year in a row, a state-sponsored survey by the University of Michigan found an increase in drug use among U.S. high school students. After a decade or more of declining drug use, Republicans will surely blame President Clinton for the bad news and attack him for not pursuing the high-profile stance of the Bush and Reagan administrations on drugs. The magnitude of this problem is less certain, but if the worrying trend of drug use among young people continues, the public debate on how best to respond to the drug problem will clearly not end with elections. In fact, there is already growing concern that the large wave of teenagers – the group most at risk of drugs – that will culminate at the turn of the century will be accompanied by a new surge in drug use. In response to the legalization of marijuana in Massachusetts, a consortium of clinicians and scientists issued a statement of concern in 2019 expressing their disagreement with how marijuana policy is shaped across the state. The question young adult mental health experts are asking is: What does the decriminalization of drugs mean for this age group? Will the legalization of drugs lead to an increase in drug abuse and marijuana addiction for Gen Z? Caught in the crossfire. Just as alcohol prohibition fueled violent gangsterism in the 1920s, today`s drug prohibition has spawned a culture of shootings and other gun-related crimes. And just as most of the violence of the 1920s wasn`t committed by people who were drunk, most of the drug-related violence today is not committed by people who are drug-rich. The murders, then and now, are based on rivalries: Al Capone ordered the execution of rival smugglers, and drug traffickers are now killing their rivals. A 1989 government study of the 193 “cocaine-related” homicides in New York Found that 87 percent of them stemmed from rivalries and disagreements related to doing business in an illegal market. In only one case, the perpetrator was in fact under the influence of cocaine.

Dirty needles. Unsterilized needles are known to transmit HIV among intravenous drug users. Yet drug users share needles because laws prohibiting the possession of drug paraphernalia have made needles a scarce commodity. So these laws actually promote epidemic diseases and death. In New York, more than 60 per cent of intravenous drug users are HIV-positive. In contrast, in Liverpool, England, where clean needles are readily available, the number is less than one percent. Not only has drug prohibition failed to reduce or reduce the harmful effects of drug use, but it has also created other serious social problems. None of the illegal drugs are biologically less attractive than alcohol or tobacco. The reason so many other Americans use these two drugs is that they are legal for adults and are widely used and promoted by established industries.

The legalization of marijuana ensures that the percentage of Americans who use this drug will reach the level of these two legal drugs. Even worse, it`s important to note that more than 58% of Americans who suffer from a substance use disorder for non-alcoholic drugs have a marijuana use disorder. Research confirms that marijuana use among young adults has reached all-time highs, particularly marijuana vaping rates. The annual Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey found that one in four young adults use marijuana and nearly one in 10 use marijuana daily. A survey found that Gen Z uses marijuana twice as often as the national average. But are these increases due to the decriminalization of drugs? Studies show that the legalization of drugs has increased marijuana use among adults, but not among teenagers, as many feared.