The Unintended Consequences of Drug Legalization Essay

The Unintended Consequences of Drug Legalization - Essay Example For example: Pew research figured out that people in the favor of legalization of illicit drugs such as marijuana have exceeded the number of people who are against the legalization of such drugs (PEW, 2013, p.1). This research was conducted through a survey during the period of 2013. Due to the increase in the number of people who are in favor of such drugs, certain states such as Colorado and Washington have accepted marijuana as a legal drug. There is heavy support for the legalization of such drugs due to the several benefits that can be attained through legalization. These benefits may include: decrease in issues related to accessibility of such drugs, decrease in crimes that are conducted by individuals to obtain these drugs, the medical benefits of these drugs and various other reasons. What these people have ignored is that the legalization of such drugs that can result in consequences that are unknown and unintended. The legalization of illicit drugs in the region of United States of America can lead to unintended negative effects including: increase in consumption by those who could not previously afford such drugs, crimes that are severe in nature may increase loss of ability to make rational choices, development of other diseases while being used to help cancer patients. Body It is a common rule of demand and supply that when any good or service is recognized as illegal, its supply through legal methods decreases and this causes shortages and due to the shortage of supply, the prices of goods and services elevates as demand exceeds supply and people are ready to pay any price for certain goods such as goods that are addictive in nature. One of the reason due to which there have been an increase in the support for the legalization of illicit drugs is that if these drugs are made legal, the supply of such drugs will increase as legal ways of supplying such drugs will increase and the supply will exceed demand which will result in decrease in prices of these drugs. The problem with this benefit of legalization of illicit drugs is that the drug will become affordable to those individuals who could not previously attain these drugs due to higher prices. Wealthy individuals in a society have the ability to pay higher prices for such drugs but those who earn lo w and those who are dependent on pocket money from their parents can hardly purchase such drugs if they are illegal because illegal drugs are sold at higher prices. This means that consumption of such drugs will elevate and number of addicts will elevate. Another issue is that consumption of such drugs will become affordable for school and college going students who live on small amount of pocket money provided by parents (Zimring, 1995, p.104). Due to this, students start experiencing psychological issues associated with abuse of illegal drugs and if an individual develops an addiction at an early age, he/she may conduct with that addiction during adulthood. Individuals even support the legalization of illicit drugs because they believe that legalization of drugs will result in decrease in rate of criminal activity associated with it and will even decrease the amount of money spend by the criminal justice system to deal with drug related criminals and crimes. Drugs are considered i llegal, due to which deals and buyers both tend to sell