Decriminalizing drugs and the effect it can have on society. Addiction shouldn't be a crime.

Drugs are a part of almost every society in the world, addiction has no boundaries, it effects the rich, the poor, the smart, the stupid, and everyone in between.
In most nations around the world illicit drugs are seen as a plague on society. Take heroin? you're just a junky. Use opiods for pain relief? you're a patient.

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first off, what is a drug? Drugs are considered any medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body.

Where most people hear drugs they think someone with a rolled up hundred dollar bill snorting lines of coke, or a group of dodgy looking individuals in a dimly lit room sharing a needle, the reality is most drug takers are on prescription medicine or smoke weed, otherwise known as the most harmless illicit substance on the planet...

Almost 50% of the United States federal prisoners are serving time for drug related offences, 50%! with an average cost to house an inmate being around $80-90,000 a year that is an enormous amount of resources being used to house prisoners that may well of done nothing more than have a few grams of pot on their person.
Looking at places like Colorado where marijuana has been legalized, the negative effects are minimal. Revenue from the $1.3 billion dollar marijuana industry has generated $200 million in taxes. What once was costing money is now creating it, helping to stimulate the economy and keeping people out of jail.

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Now obviously Colorado is only a small example and an example of only one drug, but that's an example of full legalization, not decriminalization. Decriminalizing drugs would be a massive step forward in fixing an age old problem. The stereotypes of drug addicts are usually far from right, while some fit the description perfectly, most people with a drub habit hide it so well you would never know until its too late. Take me for example, when i had my addiction issues i was working 50 hour weeks, being social, in a committed relationship, paying my bills on time, not stealing etc etc. everything a standard non addict would do. Beneath the surface there was me rushing home everyday to get a hit, keeping some in my car to sneak off at lunchtime, waking up in the middle of the night to get something into me.

From the outside you would never of known, on the inside it was killing me. The problem with addiction is, everyone sees the substance and not the person taking it. No one sees the person inside that wants help or support, and wants to overcome the problem, they see the person craving every hit and thinking of nothing but themselves.

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So how would decriminalizing drugs help? well for starters it would keep low level criminals out of the prison system. This may not seem so important but the amount of people that go to prison for pot and are forced to join gangs just to survive, or commit more crimes is overwhelming. They go from being a drug taker to facing charges of assault, making new friends who are far less desirable as well as being labelled a criminal for the rest of their lives.
So say a guy gets caught with some weed, goes to prison, gets out scott-free without having to commit any more crimes while there. He's keen and ready to get his life on track, so he goes looking for a job, struggles to find one because of the stigma attached with being a criminal (sometimes a fair stigma) what is he to do? He has very few choices, you might say well no need to commit crimes, but when you can't feed or house yourself, you can't find gainful employment and you're running out of options, what would you do? Morals more often than not take a back seat to our biological need to survive. All of a sudden hes not just the guy that had some weed, hes the guy doing B&E's to feed himself and robbing old lady's at the ATM just to survive.

Now that is simply an anecdotal story i wrote as an example, so here is an info-graphic about Portugal, one of the first countries to ever decriminalize all drugs.

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Since decriminalizing drugs Portugal has seen nothing but success, with a decrease in drug related deaths, more people accessing drug addiction treatment, no major increase in drug use and even a reduction in the number of HIV/AIDS cases.
Not only does decriminalization and legalization save money, it can save lives. While most countries tackle the war on drugs with jail time and harsher penalties the successul countries are tackling it with rehabilitation and decriminalization.

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The thing about addiction is. taking the drugs are initially a choice but once you're hooked it is nigh on impossible to get off without some sort of help or support. When we look at drug addiction as a crime and not a health problem we're ignoring some of the most vulnerable of our society. You don't know why people took drugs to begin with, and its all well and good to say its their choice but not everyone is as strong as you, some people need it as an escape from a shitty reality. Maybe its a soldier who fought for your country, has returned with PTSD and cant cope without, maybe it was someone who was ritualistically abused as a child and the only way to get rid of those memories and thoughts is to numb themselves. Everyone has different struggles and different ways they end up dealing with them and less judgement and more compassion is needed in this world.

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Another point to be made about drugs and addiction is the bias we have towards illicit drugs over prescription medication. The drug industry loves to push and pedal their drugs but most of them do nothing but mask the pain and create addiction, leading people down a dangerous path because they believe simply that because a doctor prescribed them they are safe. Prescription drug abuse and addiction is a massive issue that most people turn a blind eye to.
When we could be using things like marijuana in place of addictive opiods for pain relief the only one who loses is the patient.

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I know weed isn't some cure all, i'm not naive, but it has its place in medicine and could replace many addictive substances used today. We worry if we decriminalize drugs people will be driving around stoned off their heads, but we don't care that someone just dropped 20,mg of Valium or Xanax and jumped behind the wheel, this kind of double standard is both counter-productive and dangerous.
In fact statistics show that prescription opiods are more dangerous and responsible for more deaths than all illicit drugs combined.

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Decriminalization works, and it works damn well, the evidence is there and if we could all throw away our misconceptions and stereotypes about illicit drugs we could truly make a better change for this world.
I don't see drugs as a criminal issue but as a humanitarian issue. Not all addicts make bad choices and do bad things, some of them just need help and support to get where they need to be. The first step is the hardest but decriminalizing drugs is a step that needs to be taken.

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