Essay On Decriminalizing Drugs

Drug addiction in America is something that is frequently talked about, in movies, on television shows, and in simple everyday conversations. If there was a way to change that, and make addiction less common, then people should be jumping at the chance, but they’re not. Portugal has decriminalized drugs and their addiction rate has gone down, their people are healthier. If the United States even tried to do that, many people would be angry, but I believe that decriminalizing illicit drugs would extremely benefit our country and the lives of citizens who live here.
There are humanitarian groups that believe that certain drugs should be made legal for medicinal purposes (Hartnett), although I do agree with those humanitarian groups, there should not only be “certain drugs,” it should be all of them. These drugs would …show more content…
HIV is a virus that I hear about a lot, from what I understand it is deadly if not treated properly, but if our rates were lower, then we wouldn’t have to see it as a deadly virus, just as a problem that needs to be solved and can be solved with enough time and effort. More people could be living their lives to the fullest instead of living with a disease and constantly worrying about if they’ll see the sun rise the next day.
Another benefit of decriminalizing these illicit drugs would be the decrease in people using them. In Portugal, the rates of illicit drug use have mostly remain flat, rates of drug use in the past year have not changed significantly or have actually declined since 2001 (Alliance). If these people in Portugal can do this, and change the way people think of drugs, then any country should be able to do that as well. This stands to show that the United States could learn something from this, it is obvious that this has helped their country out and I’m positive it would benefit our country as