NCJ Number
169258
Date Published
1998
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines reasons for considering legalization of drugs as an antidrug strategy.
Abstract
Society cannot stop the flow of drugs as long as their sale is so very profitable. Legalization would remove the profit motive almost immediately, along with the crime needed to support habits. The proportion of young blacks entangled in the criminal justice system would drop sharply, as would the number of homicides, chiefly among young blacks and Hispanics; the population of prisons would drop fast. Legalization might take enough pressure off susceptible populations to allow for consideration of underlying problems. Many people have proposed many different schemes for legalizing drugs, most requiring addicts to register with Federal clinics or equivalent facilities, where drugs would be dispensed and perhaps administered. Advocates of this type of arrangement presume that few middle-class persons would want to try drugs badly enough to register, so new addictions (often cited as an unwelcome consequence of legalization) would not be encouraged. The total annual costs of the drug war are about $100 billion. If drugs were legalized, most of that money could be spent on long-term crime prevention.