Drug Decriminalization

Do you believe all drugs in America should be legalized? Chances to that are no, but it would actually greatly benefit every American if this were the case. A commonly held belief about most illegal drugs is that they are harmful, addictive, and most likely to destroy a productive member of society if consumed. However, this is not necessarily true and banning drugs may actually expanding their usage, broadening their devastation. America as a whole will be greatly better off if drugs are decriminalized than if they aren’t, including some of the most “destructive” drugs such as heroin and cocaine.
The generally held belief about decriminalization of all drugs in America is that some drugs should be decriminalized but some definitely should
Most people believe that using a certain drugs repeatedly for some time, will eventually lead to a person becoming drug addicted. This is currently our definition of addiction. This simply isn’t true; otherwise, the streets would be filled with drug addicts. In Johann Hani’s TED Talk, he explains that people in hospitals who have to take seriously strong drugs such as diamorphine, also known as heroin, and take it for extended periods of time, should all become drug addicts with our current definition of addiction. He then explains that this simply isn’t true. Many people who leave the hospital never touch that drug again in their life, and never have a need for it, and are definitely not junkies after their drug use. (Hani 3:00) How can people just manage to not need a drug anymore if they just qualified for what most people’s definition of addiction is? They just used drugs for a month or two non-stop while in the hospital getting a very severe injury treated, and all of a sudden, they can just go back to normal life? That’s because most people’s ideas of addiction is wrong. In Johann Hani’s TED Talk, he refers to Bruce Alexander’s study of addicted rats in the famous Rat Park experiment. Alexanders Experiment was simple, it put a rat in a small cage, and gave it access to two water bottles, one was regular water, and the other was water laced with diamorphine. Almost 100% of the time, the rat got addicted to the heroin water and died from overdose. He then tried the same experiment but instead, put a lot more rats in the cage, expanded the size of the cage, and put a lot of things for the rat to do such as an exercise wheel, cheese, and tubes for them to play with. This time, almost no rats drank the heroin laced water and instead they all drank the regular pure water, and none of them overdosed. (Alexander 571-576) This experiment shows that depending on the environment, not the rat,