Drug Abuse Legalization

Teen drug substance abuse, some experts claim, would decrease if only marijuana were legalized. As most adults have observed throughout their lifetimes, expert opinions often turn out to be dead wrong. The experts who continuously evangelize for drug legalization are being proven wrong in Europe and the Netherlands where such experimentation has produced less than desirable results. Here is an excerpt describing the dismay resulting from recent findings on cannabis. “[In the UK] marijuana was downgraded from a Class B to a Class C drug, essentially making possession of the substance permissible for adults. Then researchers noticed that the drug was having a number of dangerous effects. In 1997, a survey showed 1,660 cannabis users entering treatment programs for addiction. Ten years later, that number had shot up to 22,000. By 2007, 1.5 million Britons were using cannabis, and this number was accompanied by a sizable increase in related mental and behavioral disorders.

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“The harmful characteristics of cannabis are no longer that different from those of other plant-based drugs such as cocaine and heroin.” In Britain, it has also become apparent that the semi-legalization for adults led to a spike in usage for minors. One precinct commander in East London said that the reclassification of the drug caused “extensive and expansive” increases in use by teenagers… “Society has seriously underestimated how dangerous cannabis really is.” (Unknown source) By Ann Walker