According to the Auditor General's report, this translates to $500 million for annual enforcement of drug laws, another $500 million for legal fees, and another conservative estimate of $50,000 per year for each incarcerated offender. ... The LEAP program is Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Founded on March 16, 2002, LEAP is a non-profit organization made up of current and former members of the law enforcement and criminal justice communities who are speaking out about the failures of our existing drug policies. Leap has a mission to create "a system of legalization and regulation tha...

• Word Count: 2108
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

That is the amount of money spent on the War on Drugs each year-$1,271 per second spent on law enforcement, incarceration, and interdiction. ... Enforcement of drug laws causes law enforcement officers to be more confrontational, preventing public trust. ... McNamara is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a group started by retired law enforcement officials who have fought in the war on drugs and believe that war cannot be won (Martin 2009). ... Drug enforcement laws do not prevent drug trafficking nor the violence associated with the illegal trade. ... If this were a l...

• Word Count: 1215
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• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

This extra funding could be used to create more efficient law enforcement upon violent crime. ... Law enforcement should not be using such a massive amount of time and resources busting young people with harmless amounts of marijuana, but instead looking at the bigger picture of who is distributing the drugs committing heinous acts of violence. ... Despite the U.S enforcing the hardest drug policies in the entire world, it is the leading all other nations in marijuana use amongst its citizens. ... Marijuana is a drug that would too greatly benefit the United States for it to remain illegal. .....

• Word Count: 1053
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• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The legalization of marijuana would greatly reduce drug violence in cities and reduce spending by law enforcement, as well as helping the American economy. ... Law enforcement costs would be greatly reduced. Marijuana is currently listed under the DEA's drug scheduling list as a schedule 1 drug.... People could now safely pick up their treatment with worrying about being arrested by law enforcement, dealing with drug dealers, or receiving unsafe marijuana that may contain fungus or other foreign toxins. ... Law enforcement spending could be greatly reduced because the number of prisoners ...

• Word Count: 1578
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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Finally they would find out how much it is costing government to enforce Canada's pot laws is estimated at 300 million dollars, with only 20,000 people arrested on marijuana possession charges each year. ... Taxes from the legalized selling of marijuana could be used to help those who have problems with more seriously harmful drugs also the money that the government spends on enforcing the marijuana laws could be used in the same way. ... This money could be used to help with more illicit drug trade with stuff like cocaine and heroin and funding overall drug use prevention and treatme...

• Word Count: 813
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The Drug Enforcement Administration provides a comprehensive resource guide to the drugs they prohibit in their 2011 edition titled, "Drugs of Abuse". ... The Drug Enforcement Administration has refused to allow large scale fundings to keep the drug illegal on multiple occasions. ... Abiding by insufficient prohibitionist logic, the choice of harming oneself obliges the government to damage the drug abuser in magnitudes that exceed damage done by the drug itself. ... Furthermore, ending prohibition would not necessarily increase drug abuse. ... Twelve percent of drug users are black,...

• Word Count: 1345
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• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Would your answer still be "yes" if you were told that sometimes the only drug that can help their pain is marijuana. ... It is not in the interest of law enforcement to drive patients to the illegal market. ... Patients who meet all of these requirements must also have proof of their identity and show it to any law enforcement officer who questions the patient regarding his/her use of medical marijuana. ... Some of these concerns include the fact that marijuana use can lead younger people to experiment with harder drugs. ... Can society ever look and think of marijuana as anything other tha...

• Word Count: 1318
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• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Through the legalization of marijuana, the Canadian society can benefit through positive effects, including; a control of the marijuana substance; a decrease of usage of both legal and illegal drugs; and an increase in tax revenues, along with a decrease in government spending on drug enforcement and crime. ... By allowing drug users a legal way of stimulating and achieving a similar high, many drug addicts would decrease or all together, stop the practice of using harder drugs, such as cocaine or heroin. ... However, through the legalization of "soft drugs" like marijuana in The Netherlands...

• Word Count: 1122
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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Secondly, marijuana is a gateway drug. Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the United States and tends to be the first illegal drug teens use. ... While most marijuana users do not go on to use more dangerous drugs, most heavy drug users started with marijuana. ... Law enforcement officials described marijuana as a "gateway" drug that leads to harder drug use, since methamphetamine users almost always report they used marijuana before they used ice... Millions of dollars in federal drug enforcement money began to flow into Hawaii, but by than, the war on marijuana spread to Ka...

• Word Count: 1430
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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

I'm not sure that we will see the same thing here given what we have said with regard to our enforcement priorities.... The statement has been made for several years, by groups ranging from law enforcement to political, that our local, state, and federal prisons are running out of room because of the number of people incarcerated for drug-related offenses. ... A number of advocates for legalization have suggested that the workload on local law enforcement would ease if marijuana were legal. ... The advocates claim that the workload on local law enforcement will be lessened if marijuana w...

• Word Count: 4020
• Approx Pages: 16
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The federal government, seeing the increase of marijuana use, passed new drug laws. ... President Jimmy Carter said, "Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than use of the drug itself. ... Proponents say marijuana should be legal because it will reduce the great amount of money spent on enforcement. ... Every year in the United States, ten billion dollars are spent on enforcing drug laws alone. ... They state that in many cases, drug users have quit because of trouble with the law. ...

• Word Count: 1460
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the year 1937, the United States government made the drug marijuana illegal. ... This was a time where many mind altering drugs where experimented with and widely used. ... Ever since marijuana has become illegal, enforcing it has been an issue. ... The amount of money the federal Drug Enforcement Agency spends each year is $1.3 billion a year. ... First the government should set an age limit on the purchasing of the drug. ...

• Word Count: 1605
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Others, make the claim that the legalization of marijuana would actually bring an increase in the use of other drugs, an increase in violent crime, and create a virtual nightmare for law enforcement. ... "The current legal status of marijuana was established in 1970 with the passage of the Controlled Substances Act, which divided drugs into five schedules and placed marijuana in Schedule I, the category for drugs with high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use."... This money could be used, to give an example, to fund drug prevention programs in our schools or community centers. .....

• Word Count: 2154
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• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

When compared to currently available legal substances and drugs such as cigarettes and alcohol, marijuana seems less of a threat then pictured. ... Currently laws enforcing marijuana prohibition further overcrowd our jails and divert scarce public safety resources away from issues and problems that really need attention. Stiffer sentencing on drug offenders has overcrowded jails in the United States so much that violent criminals including murderers have been given earlier releases to make room for guys who've been handed mandatory life terms without the possibility of parole for their "t...

• Word Count: 888
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

With that being said federal governments cannot regulate laws drugs but only the states legislatives can. ... The war on drugs has had a dramatic use when it comes in for the cost of war starting in 1971 when president Nixon went without congress approval to declare war on drugs on July 17, 1971 (Kieffer, Par11). ... Just as Kieffer states "Drug use is a health, not a criminal issue"(Kieffer, line59) which I agree with because most children use drugs as a way to distract them from different issues going on in their life. ... All this extra money can be used to fund programs and decre...

• Word Count: 1375
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• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Against, and For, Legalization There is, as would be expected, the age-old outcry against drugs being legal, no matter what the drug. ... Some may argue that we already have alcohol as a legal drug, and that we do not need another. ... The idea is to make the drug available to those in great pain. ... This is arguably due to the fact that "present classification failed to differentiate between hard drugs and cannabis, leading young people to believe that hard drugs are not dangerous and making it difficult to give convincing anti-drug advice" (Anonymous More calls for legalized cannabis 5). ...

• Word Count: 1141
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• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

To enforce marijuana prohibition, taxpayers shell out an estimated $10 billion annually, with only 734,000 arrests. ... Substance abuse rises wherever the public is tolerant of drug laws. ... They hold charity events annually to raise enough money for drug education. Each year the CNOA tracks bills that would benefit the public on the war on drugs. ... They believe that innocent people die in pain because the drug is illegal. ...

• Word Count: 1235
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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

While most pot laws across America are becoming more lenient to their policies than they were decades ago, citizens being arrested for marijuana account for half of drug arrests adding to the millions of people incarcerated in prisons and the seven billion dollars the government dumps for prohibition. ... For something like weed which is used wide spread, punishing pot users and chasing after them is more of a waste of time for the police than it is for them to bust an underground meth lab- the drug itself is capable of offering harsher physical effects to the body than pot. ... While a flood ...

• Word Count: 1103
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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

What few people fail to realize is that this and other drugs were banned by the fault of racial intolerance. ... In 1962, a White House drug conference described the hazards of grass "exaggerated," and a 1972 presidential commission recommended decriminalization of the drug. ... Physicians of the time also used marijuana to treat headaches, insomnia, and menstrual cramps and the drug was available in most drug stores (Hermes 51). ... In my personal opinion, I feel that the only reason it is seen as a "gateway" is because in order to obtain it you have to go to a "drug dealer" who sells all ...

• Word Count: 3551
• Approx Pages: 14
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Billions of drug money has been derived from marijuana, causing vast amounts of criminal outbreaks and many deaths. ... (Drug Facts) Body The issue of legalizing medical marijuana has been debated intensely on both sides of the argument. ... The enforcement of such laws and regulations must be abided to very strictly and in a professional manner. ... This effect of marijuana can cause patients that have a serious dependence upon this drug. ... (Drug) In an effort to understand why patients require this form...

• Word Count: 2195
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate