The War on Drugs

With drug-related crime on the rise, more and more people ar speaking out for legalization as a more practical solution to the drug problem. Gore Vidal, whom some have called America's finest living essayist, is one of them. He believes that it is possible to stop drug addiction in the United States in a very short time (Vidal 382). The way to do this is to make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Each drug would be labeled with a precise description of what effect--good or bad--the drug will have on the user. This must be done with total honesty. For example, according to Vidal, it should not be stated that marijuana is addictive or dangerous, because most people know it is not. However, drugs like heroin and "speed" are dangerous and addictive and should be labeled as such (Vidal 382).

While Vidal has tried every illicit drug and liked none of them, disproving the popular theory that "a single whiff of opium will enslave the mind," he believes many drugs

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ts of the drug problem. It cataloged the costs of prohibition: violence between drug traffickers, crime caused by addicts having to pay prohibition-inflated prices for their habit, overdoses and poisoning from the contaminated illegal drugs, the spread of HIV and other infections through contaminated needles, and overcrowded jails ("Legalizing Drugs" 26). Shortly after Elders made her statements on drug legalization, the Rev. Walter Shropshire Jr,. a minister at the Foundry United Methodist Church where Hillary Clinton attends, said such a step might make a safer environment for everyone. According to Shropshire, if doctors could write prescriptions for narcotics, addicts could obtain their drugs cheaply and without having to resort to criminal behavior ("Elder's View" 15). Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Columbia's Nobel Prize-winning novelist, has also called for the controlled worldwide legalization of drugs. Marquez asserts that prohibition has made the drug trade more attractive and profitable and that the United States and other countries should focus on ways in which legalization can be administered (Marquez D15). Others have also stated that the use of illicit drugs is creating a generation of hopelessly addicted and crime-
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Approximate Word count = 1774
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)