Why Is Drugs A Victimless Crime?

Whether people sell or buy drugs, the involvement with drugs is not a victimless crime. Many believe that the use of drugs does not affect the people around them because the individual may be using drugs within a closed environment and is not causing any harm to anyone else, but themselves. This is true to an extent, at the moment of doing drugs the individual possibly is not harming anyone but themselves, but eventually the individual will come into contact with other people such as friends or family, possibly affecting their wellbeing. Other than marijuana, most Americans have not physically seen or been around dangerous drugs such as cocaine, heroine, or crack, however, because of media and technological advances, most American know and …show more content…
Within these communities there is a chance that drug related crime will occur such as burglary, and violent crimes. In addition, the family and friends of this 9 percent population has seen first hand how a dangerous drug can ruin a life. They have also seen the antisocial behavior that drug involvement produces and how people on drugs sacrifice everything they own to get a high. However, with a country consisting of 319 million people, only 9.2 percent (29.3 million) people have reported to use illegal drugs, it can be confirmed that majority of the citizens of the United States do not, and are not affected by drug addiction. As for the 9.2 percent affected by drug use antisocial environmental factor has been known to be a predictor for drug use along with peers, and situational stressors contributing to their drug problem (Rodriguez et al., 1993). Currently, the United States is attempting to move away from using the term “War on Drugs,” instead the United States justice system wants to focus more on helping people with addictions by diverting them to rehabilitation …show more content…
Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2012). While most Americans believe that the crime rates have increased because of media coverage, most Americans also believe that drug use has increased within the United States. This is possibly due to the media’s involvement and recent broadcasting about the legalization of marijuana across the United States. While there is no answer for the current drug problem in the United States, current policies seem to be working well enough to slow the spread of drug related problems within society. Possibly a study can be conducted within the states that legalized the use of marijuana to better understand how the legalization and decimalization will affect the future use of drugs. While this is merely a dream, the only way to remove the drug issue in the United States would be to create a mechanism that can better detect drug traffickers and have a better monitoring of the Mexico and United States