Essay Example on Another wider issue that the War on Drugs have failed

The law enforcement has helped reduce the quantity of illicit drugs but the traffickers have been allowed to multiply due to corruption and in effect negating any decrease in quantity Polomarkakis 2017 However marijuana is becoming legal in Colorado and Washington for recreational use America could save up to 8 7 billion dollars on tax revenues if they legalised marijuana Miron and Waldock 2010 This would reduce the drug trafficking from other countries and the price of marijuana whilst gaining money to spend on the state This could be an alternative legislative use of marijuana but nevertheless since they declared the War on Drugs they have failed to reduce the importation manufacturing cultivation distribution and sale of illicit drugs They have spent far too much for the drugs problem not to decline The War on Drugs is failing to produce results and there needs to be a different approach to drug legislation The first main issue that needs to be changed is the incarceration rates 

There needs to be more focus on rehabilitating drug addiction than sending them to prison to just come back out to offend again Less incarceration will reduce the amount of unemployment and furthermore reduce the drug offences Spohn and Holleran 2002 Therefore the legislation needs to input the different levels of severity of illicit drug use For instance if someone was to hold 500 grams of cocaine they should be jailed but if someone was to be holding 5 grams then they should be sentenced to a fine or community service After their punishment there needs to be a system to find whether they are addicted then if so these individuals should go into a rehabilitative program This will not only reduce the economic costs of incarceration it will allow the government to use that spare money to rehabilitate addiction and repair the relationship between the law enforcement and ethnic minorities An alternative drug legislation is legalising marijuana Barack Obama got rid of the term War on Drugs In 2016 Obama said he would like to treat marijuana as a public health issue the same way we do with cigarettes or alcohol Lopez 2017 online Evidence illustrates that the US may be slowly decriminalising the use of marijuana Colorado and Washington have legalised marijuana but since this is recent there is no evidence that demonstrate the successes in the US However Netherlands legalised marijuana in 1976 for recreational use Since the decriminalisation of marijuana in the Netherlands the use has steadily declined Spichtinger 2004 This may be because people now find it boring This is the future of the world as many countries believe that this drug is of a lesser dangerous substance so therefore should be legalised the same way as with tobacco and alcohol