Article Tools

I try here to examine the correlating argument between drug legalization and increased drug use, then I take a look at what may be a more important issue concerning drug use, and poor behavior in general.

I was watching a news debate not long ago where the pundits were arguing for and against drug legalization, each in turn. Now this is an old debate, and honestly I haven’t any strong opinions either way. The reason that I bring it up is to examine the arguments made concerning behavior and the implications that are inferred by the reasoning. Now the analyst that was arguing for legalization was having a difficult time rebutting the analyst arguing against. The sticking point was the premise that decriminalization would in effect justify use in the minds of people who would otherwise abstain, specifically teen people. And the conclusion that necessarily follows is that even more people, especially teens, would use drugs and then destruction of society ensues. Now I agree that drug use damages communities and destroys people’s lives, and teens are at the greatest risk. What I don’t agree with is the proposition that legalization causes a change of mind in people. And teens, the receptacles of all knowledge, and being perfectly capable of running their own lives, are least susceptible to authority’s permission when making the decision to use. Now it is true that drinking is legal and people are more likely to think drinking is acceptable than using drugs. Do we then draw the conclusion that these people are taking their moral cue’s from the government and therefore if drugs are legalized these very same people will now think it acceptable to use drugs? I don’t think that this would be the case; it seems to me that the people who are against drug use but think that drinking is acceptable would continue to believe as they always had. Drinking has been a traditionally accepted part of most of the cultures that Americans are typically descended from, where drug use has usually been stigmatized. But when a pundit says that teens justify their use based on social acceptance, by peers, popular culture, and the like, it seems that legalization fits the criteria. I don’t believe that this is the case; we are talking about influences that they respect and admire versus just another entity of authority that, in fact, adds a further dimension of enticing rebellion to the mix. I think instead we have to examine what teens say and recognize their tendency as well as ours to pass the buck. Granted peer pressure, and life imitating what passes for art in popular culture is a factor in teen drug use, no doubt. What I think we are not focusing on enough is this cultural obsession with justification in order to hold on to what we should recognize as the root of our real problem. The truth is teens and adults alike are capable of recognizing irresponsibility, but we want what we want when want it. We say yes to them as small children in order to make our lives easier. Who wants to spend time teaching their kids when they can be taught by TV and video games, which then gets them ready as teens and as adults to be swayed by these and all other forms of popular culture. And popular culture as a consumable item maintains its appeal by stimulating us, giving us something that triggers a cascade of hormones, instigating all of those moods and desires and gaining our attention. Is it any wonder that after 10 or so years of a steady diet of this that those kids would want to gravitate toward something that offers the same appeal and gives them an outlet to insist upon their freedom? How can we expect our kids and ourselves for that matter to be responsible and virtuous when we take every easy way available to avoid responsibility, justify it by appeals to emotion, then insist upon being programmed by those who’s interest it is to solicit to our basest desires?