Do you think that the government's anti-drug policy should focus on treatment or punishment?

Question

I personally think that drug DEALERS should be placed in jail. But the people that are addicted need to be helped. Whoever explains with details will get chosen for the best answer.

Answer 1

I think it should focus on legalization and taxation. If drugs are legalized, they no longer become some glamorous thing to attract teenagers and young adults. Also, they can be regulated through pharmaceutical companies. This keeps people from dying from "bad hits". It would keep addicts under the care and supervision of physicians. The drugs would be taxable, which would generate quite a bit of revenue. On top of that, if drugs are legal, they are MUCH cheaper. That would knock the bottom out of the drug industry, and drug dealers could no longer make a living. They'd have to actually work like the rest of us.

Answer 2

Personally, I don't think our government should have a drug policy, but that argument is pretty mute considering we do. So, that being the case, I would definitely go for treatment instead of jail because these people are ADDICTED to the drugs and need help wheening off them. In prison, they will either continue to get the drugs or find new drugs to boost them. I agree with you about the dealers, that is under the current rules. If you break the law and are caught distributing the drugs, then yes you should be punished for that, but for end-users, they could probably be helped a lot more by treatment instead of punishment. Thanks and have a nice day.

Answer 3

Yes, lets all coddle the poor little drug addict, the alcoholic, the compulsive overeater, the gambling addict, the sex addict and any other "VICTIM" of all these evils in our society.

Any twelve step program will tell the addict that to recover they must accept responsibility for the things they have done while using. Any drug and alcohol counselor will tell you that until the addict wants to get clean, no program is going to make that happen.

Now realize that the vast majority of the drug addicts are not the pillars of the community. They are usually low level laborers to mid-management level people who generally commit other crimes to finance their use/abuse. (Sure there is the occassional sports star that can afford his drugs or the actor or singer, but these people are not the large percentage of addicts).

Now realize that while they are "doing their time", they dry out the hard way. They don't give methadone in jail to wein you off the horse. For many, in fact one of my relatives, this was a hard landing and a realization that they have reached the bottom of their social descent and it gives them the wake up call to get clean. My relative was on a methadone treatment program before his arrest and he said it was just a cheap high until they quit giving it to him and then it was right back to the heroin.

I'm not saying that there aren't addicts out there that want to get clean and yes, we should have a way to help them, but that path can't merely be a path to escape responsibility for the actions of addicts that are facing charges. Too many times addicts use "treatment" to mitigate their sentence and then when the trial's over, right back to the old tricks.

Answer 4

Both, but just like you, I believe that the low level users and even supplier/users should be treated (the latter understrict supervision and only if they roll over on their suppliers in group homes) and higher level dealers and any dealer supplying the very young put away for looooonnng terms.
We also need to emphasize early drug education and avoidance counseling by trained law enforcement officers in all schools. It is working in our county and hopefully we will not have the problems that are evident in other areas of the country and even our state (NC).
Addicts, even those phychologically addicted to only grass need very good professional help and close followup for months and years. Thay must not be simply returned to the same environment that caused their addiction in the first place. It isa complicated problem after addcition. The only hope is interrupting the addictive chain of events in its earliest stages.

Answer 5

bob has to say treatment

the users obviously need rehab and help on their feet, long term use of coc, meth, sniffing and shooting up coctails will **** somebody up hard and when your physically and mentally addicted to something that **** gonna run your life and your not gonna have a happy life or feel good about what your doing, they aint role models and they cant say they are doing something that makes them happy. The users do this to themselves, but if everybody sits back and lets them murder their brains we just as bad as them.


Then theres the dealers, theres basically two types of dealers. Your average person selling for money and then you got your cartels.

The average person, generally is not as bad as people make them out to be. Most average dealers bob knows are at desperate times to be slinging, infact when bob was 13 bob used to sell marijuana because bob lived with a single mother who couldnt afford to give bob a allowence like all the other kids and when you 13 you young see your friends with **** that you cant even dream of affording on your own, nieve and when you see a opertunity to make your life better you gonna take it even if it means making someone elses life worse. A lot of people resort to selling drugs to feed their families and again, you cannot fully blame someone for grabing an opertunity to make them and their loved ones lives better. Its greedy and selfish, but you gotta do what you gotta do its survival of the fittest. None the less these dealers should be punished with what we got now.

Then we got the cartels, its hard to say what should happen to cartel dealers cause, half the time the government cant even touch them. When cartel dealers are prosecuted, evidence, witnesses and government officials dissapear until they get what they want. Majority of the time when cartel dealers and associates are arrested and prosecuted they are charged with murder or some other mroe sever crime then drug trafficking. However for the ones that do get caught, tehy should make the punishment more sever for large quantities and large scale opperations. As of right now bob is pretty sure they just stack multiple charges of trafficking, similar to how people who steal from trains and cargos mutiple times get 30+ charges of rackateering. They should have it if you have so much kilos on you or linked to you, a more serveer charge.

Answer 6

Certainly the DEALERS should be imprisoned. And while I sympathise with the addicts, unfortunately those addicts often commit (sometimes heinous) crimes to obtain money for their addiction and cannot safely be allowed to remain at liberty.

I do feel that addicts should be sent to treatment facilities rather than prisons however. At least there they would have a chance at rehabilitation, whereas in prison they would not.

So in answer to your initial question: The anti-drug policy should focus on both punishment AND rehabilitation.

Answer 7

I think most drugs should be legalized as controlled substances and as long as users dont bother or harm anyone else while using, it should be none of anyone elses business. I'll give you my reasoning;

For one thing, everyone talks about gangs and gang violence and what to do about it. Well, what is the main thing these street gangs do? They sell drugs. You want to definitely end the reign of these gangs, legalize what theyre selling! Take it off the streets and into liquor stores (or something controlled along those lines) and what are they going to sell? What are gangs going to do? Maybe theyll go to college and stay in high school instead of dropping out to deal crack and shoot others who are competing with them.

For another, the war on drugs has been a catastrophic failure, not to mention a colossal waste of time, money, and resources. Mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession have filled our prisons to the brim with non-violent offenders. Its ridiculous.

Thirdly, with a government controlled drug industry, quality and safety of drugs and drug use could be controlled. Do you know that many ecstasy makers mix in horse tranquilizers in the pills? Thats extremely dangerous. No-one really knows for sure what theyre taking when they take pills like that. We need to legalize drugs, control the production, focus on REAL drug education and prevention, but its unrealistic to think that the anti-drug propaganda that passes for drug education these days is stopping anyone from doing drugs. What its doing, by not giving any real information and using blatant scare-tactics is making sure that people dont have any information on the drugs theyre going to take anyway! People need to be informed on how to do their drugs safely and responsibly.

There should most definitely be voluntary treatment centers where addicts can go to end their addictions, if they so desire. But people have been using drugs for CENTURIES! And if you think there will ever come a time when no-one uses drugs, youre living in shiny-happy-fairy-funland, not reality. There will always be people who use drugs, and so there will always be a drug market, so we might as well legalize the drugs and make the industry as safe, controlled and helpful for people as we can, because nothing else will work!!!

Make sense? Thats my basic thinking, if you need any more explanation or elaboration on something, ask me.

Answer 8

Like with any regulation enforcement job they grant you with a something like a lie detector attempt and they're going to ask you that question alongside with various others. So the way round it will be at the same time as they interrogate you purely say you have not used it in any respect reason from what I listen basically admitting to doing it once might want to get you disqualified & by utilising the way they could tell who're undesirable liars reason it truly is their job.

Answer 9

Treatment.

Punishment has shown little to no deterrant to stopping the use of illegal substances.

Legalize drugs to eliminate the criminal element (dealers) from the equation.

Same thing happened when Prohibition was repealed. The mobs controlling the illegal sale of alcohol had to switch to illicit drugs to get their money.

Cut off the drug money and they will have to look somewhere else.

Answer 10

I agree. Treatment for the victims punishment for the dealers.