A 2019 Census of Employment found that cannabis legalization directly created 211,000 full-time employees in the United States, for a total of 296,000 in all related fields combined (such as the total number of states where cannabis is legal). DataTrek Research`s Nick Colas said in 2019 that cannabis is the «fastest-growing labor market in the United States.» [111] [112] If cannabis were legalized nationally in the United States, it is estimated that it would create more than one million jobs. [113] In examining this crisis, I slowly but surely realized that full legalization may not be the right answer to the war on drugs. Perhaps the U.S. simply cannot regulate these potentially lethal substances in a legal environment. Perhaps some form of prohibition – albeit less stringent than the one we have today – is the right way to go. David Simon, creator of the television series The Wire, told U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in 2011 that he would «give him another season of the HBO series to end the war on drugs.» Holder had invited show stars Wendell Pierce, Sonja Sohn and Jim True-Frost to Washington on behalf of an anti-drug PR campaign and called Simon and Ed Burns for another season or movie of the series. Simon responded in a letter to a newspaper that offered the trade. [197] Those who do not traffic drugs but commit crimes to finance their consumption are, of course, more numerous than the big traffickers.

And it is true that once opioid addicts, for example, enter a treatment program that often involves maintenance doses of methadone, the rate at which they commit crimes decreases dramatically. My hospital`s addiction clinic claims an 80% reduction in criminal convictions among heroin addicts once they have been stabilized on methadone. The US «war on drugs» has contributed significantly to political instability in South America. The huge profits that can be made from cocaine and other drugs grown in South America are largely due to the fact that they are illegal in the wealthy neighboring country. This causes people in the relatively poor countries of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil to break their own laws by organizing the cultivation, preparation and trafficking of cocaine to the United States. This has allowed criminal, paramilitary and guerrilla groups to make huge profits, exacerbating already serious law and order and political problems. In Bolivia, the political rise of former President Evo Morales was directly linked to his popular movement against U.S.-sponsored coca eradication and criminalization policies. However, coca has been cultivated in the Andes for centuries. Among their various legitimate uses, coca leaves are chewed and steeped like a tea known to reduce the effects of human altitude sickness for their mild stimulant and appetite suppressant effects. Rural farmers in poor areas where coca has historically been grown often find themselves at the difficult and potentially violent intersection of state-sponsored eradication efforts, illicit cocaine growers and traffickers seeking coca stocks, anti-government paramilitary forces selling cocaine as a revolutionary source of funding, and the historical difficulties of rural subsistence farming (or its alternative). typical – their land). and in an urban slum).

In some areas, coca crops and other farmers are often destroyed by U.S.-sponsored eradication treatments (usually sprayed from the air with varying degrees of discrimination), whether or not farmers directly supply the cocaine trade, thereby destroying their livelihoods. Agricultural producers in these countries face additional pressure to grow coca for cocaine trafficking by dumping subsidized agricultural products (fruits, vegetables, grains, etc.) produced by Western countries (mainly agricultural surpluses in the US and EU) (see BBC reference below), reducing prices they might otherwise receive for alternative crops such as maize. The net effect may be lower prices for all crops, which can both make farmers` livelihoods more precarious and cocaine stocks cheaper for cocaine growers. However, the situation could be much worse than what I have proposed so far if we legalized the use of drugs other than opiates. So far, I have only looked at opiates, which usually have a calming effect. If opiate addicts commit crimes, even if they receive their drugs for free, it is because they cannot meet their other needs in any other way; But, unfortunately, there are drugs whose use leads directly to violence because of their psychopharmacological properties, and not only because of the criminality associated with their distribution. Stimulant drugs such as crack cocaine cause paranoia, increase aggression and promote violence. Much of this violence takes place in the home, as the relatives of crack cocaine sufferers will testify. I know this from my own knowledge of the emergency room and in the wards of our hospital. Only a person who has not been attacked by addicts who have become psychotic because of his drug could look with serenity at the prospect of a further spread of stimulant abuse. For the proposed legalization of drugs to have a much-vaunted positive impact on crime rates, these drugs would have to be both cheap and readily available.

Legalizers assume that there is a natural limit to the demand for these drugs and that if their use were legalized, the demand would not increase significantly. These mentally unstable individuals who currently use drugs would continue to do so, eliminating the need to commit crimes, while psychologically more stable people (like you and me and our children) would not be tempted to use drugs by their new legal status and fairness. But price and availability, I do not need to say, have a profound influence on consumption: the cheaper alcohol becomes, for example, the more it is consumed, at least within wide limits. The opposition to the legalization of hemp, which uses plants of the genus cannabis for commercial purposes, emphasizes the fact that those who want to legalize the use of cannabis for recreational and medicinal purposes present it themselves as their Trojan horse precisely for this purpose: the risk of punishment for the production, sale or consumption of a drug, that is banned or heavily regulated, incurs additional costs for anyone who still chooses to engage in illegal trade on a black market. Anyone who manufactures or trades in a prohibited substance runs the same risk of being caught, regardless of the strength (potency) of the substance. Therefore, dealers and producers will always prefer to transport and trade as strong drugs as possible. It is more profitable with the same risk. Critics of drug prohibition often cite the fact that the end of alcohol prohibition in 1933 led to an immediate drop in murders and robberies to support the argument that legalizing drugs could have similar effects.

Once those involved in drug trafficking have a legal means of resolving commercial disputes, the number of murders and violent crimes could decrease. Robert W. Sweet, a federal judge, strongly agrees: «The current policy of prohibiting drug use through the use of the criminal law is a mistake.» [128] When alcohol consumption was banned during prohibition, it led to gang warfare and the training of some of the most important criminals of the time, including the infamous Al Capone. Similarly, drug traffickers today resolve their differences through violence and intimidation, which legal drug dealers do not. Critics of prohibition also point out that police are more likely to be corrupted in a system where bribes are so available. Police corruption due to drugs is so widespread that a pro-legalization newsletter made it a weekly article. [129] Police were able to solve other crimes, such as burglaries, robberies, and robberies, by interviewing people arrested for drug use. Some even provide information about people who sell drugs, and police have seized large quantities of drugs as a result of information from people brought in for a urine test.

Numerous interrogations of drug addicts have also resulted in search warrants and the recovery of stolen property. These drugs are dangerous and kill people, but Americans and policymakers are largely impervious to deaths — they rarely refer to those hundreds or tens of thousands of deaths as a crisis or epidemic. Thus, these problems, especially with alcohol, take a back seat and leave the industry to get away with its excesses, as the legislator gets a passport for inaction. A report by the World Health Organization states: «Because cannabis is an illegal drug, cultivation, harvesting and distribution are not subject to quality control mechanisms to ensure the reliability and safety of the product used by consumers.