Social effects of drugs

The most common effects on social drug abuse is monotone!

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The vast majority of social problems associated with drugs are a direct result of the drug war, rather than the drugs themselves. People have always used drugs, and references to them show up in the oldest writings known.

While there will always be some people who get into trouble with drugs, especially with alcohol, the biggest problems were created with the advent of prohibition. Just as we saw the rise of criminal gangs during alcohol prohibition, who stepped in to take advantage of the newly created black market for alcohol, we see the same thing with the artificially created black market for drugs, along with all the violence that comes with it.

Even worse has been the wholesale criminalization and incarceration of non-violent, victimless "criminals", especially in minority communities. The US has the largest population of prisoners of any country in the World, about twenty-five percent of whom are victims of the drug war. The social costs of turning this many otherwise law-abiding citizens into felons is incalculable, because, once so labelled, these people can no longer find employment, get assistance for education, or vote, effectively turning them into real criminals, once released.

Addicts, who would otherwise be harming no one, are forced into crime to support the artificially inflated prices of the government created black market. This is why we have our cars and homes broken into - to solve a problem that didn't exist.

We pay for the drug war directly, but we also pay for it indirectly through the petty crime I just mentioned, and because we must pay for the tax revenue lost in the black market.

Aside from the notion that government shouldn't be dictating what it's citizens do or don't do with their free time, the costs of prohibition - both in terms of human misery and actual money - far outweigh any supposed benefits.