Probable Negative Outcomes of Drug Legalization

As of the Cambridge dictionary, “Drugs are any natural or artificially made chemical that is taken for pleasure to improve someone’s performance of an activity or because a person can’t stop using it”. “Drugs are made of chemicals, many similar to the chemicals already in our system. They alter the way nerve cells normally send, receive, and process information. They do this by imitating the brain’s natural chemical messengers, by over-stimulating the “reward circuit” of the brain, flooding the brain with excess chemicals, and binding to receptors in the brain”, as quoted from Phoenix House. The consumption of drugs causes conflict to the brain. Once we inhale, smoke, inject or snort drug substances; the brain changes and causes people to slur their words, become more aggravated, lethargic, aggressive, energetic, euphoric, paranoia and even delusional behaviour. So legalizing all drugs might not be a good idea.

Legalizing all drugs would cause a lot of effect to the U.S., both the population the people itself and to the economy. People won’t do drugs if they don’t have the motivation of doing so.  Consequences of legalizing would lead to less population, more population in prison, increase of illegal drug uses population, more crime, more usage of guns, more expenses or causing the person who does drugs to experience pain. It would of course affect the whole country.

One of the very main reasons that people do drugs is because they’re stressed. They may also be influenced by their environment, use it as a celebration, have pleasure, have other emotional problems or being pressured to try it out. Peer pressure has a lot of influence on drug users. A drug free teenager at a party could be heavily influenced by his/her friends to try drugs and therefore could be heavily tempted to be involved. The more they get involved, the harder it is for them to quit and eventually will venture off into their own path of drug choices, possibly getting addicted along the way increasingly. Sooner or later the need for drugs overcomes their mind and body and consumes them completely; to where without it, they can’t survive and finally become addicted to it. But before a person becomes devoted to drugs, they abuse them first.

Abuse happens when we use the drugs excessively and irresponsibly; abusing it for the effects of the drugs once in a while. Meaning, you started off with curiosity of wanting to know what consuming it would be like. When you tried it for the first time you cannot go back, therefore, instead of going back to the normal life you lived, you become addicted to it instead. Addiction happens when you can’t resist from the need of wanting drugs, even though you may feel relaxed from it at first but in the end you’ll feel painful and would urge to have more. By wanting more, people get obsessed and would hanker to do drugs, therefore, they would do anything to possess drug and may lead to crime. But there are some cases where patients are given illegal drugs for medical use at the right amount to where it helps them cope with certain things and isn’t enough to harm them. In what I have mentioned, legalizing all drugs in the United States would certainly have pros and cons.