Speech, Heroin

I’d assume that you’re all familiar with the government’s war on drugs. A failing operation since it began in the 1970s. In today’s society and within my own generation, illegal drug use has become even more popular among minors, among these drugs is heroin. For those of who you don’t know, heroin is an opiate drug synthesized from morphine. It is usually in the form of a brown or white powder and also as a sticky black substance known as black tar heroin.
With the way that we are currently trying to control the drug market right now, we can’t stop the growing popularity of heroin. Recently a well-known actor, Phillip Seymour Hoffman died of a suspected overdose of heroin, which brought into sharp relief once again the growing problem that heroin is becoming.
According to the substance abuse and mental health administration, the number of heroin users has nearly doubled from 370,000 to over 660,000 in 2012, and that number is still growing today. The number of deaths cause by heroin overdoses has increased by 45% from 2006 to 2010. So what is the reason behind this spike in the number of heroin users? Heroin used to be a street drug. The favored drug for gangs and mainly an urban issue, but the geography of the drug users has expanded into suburban and rural areas. The main reasons behind the spreading popularity is because of the increase in heroin imports from Latin American drug cartels, creating a greater and cheaper supply of the drug, and a larger market for opioids driven by prescription painkillers. So far the governments war on drugs has made very little progress in stopping drugs from getting into the U.S., with over 51,000,000,00 dollars being spent annually to fund the war on drugs, it’s time for us to consider a new approach.
In some areas around the world drug laws are liberal and even have been removed, or they aren’t being enforced. Once such country is Portugal. In 2001 Portugal decriminalized all drug possession and removed