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Thursday, April 5, 2012

Legalize abused drugs, including methamphetamine?

In The Washington Post yesterday morning, George Will comments on drug legalization.  He doesn't specifically mention methamphetamine--the focus is on cocaine and marijuana--but, is legalization or decriminalization of methamphetamine a viable policy?

Reference: Will GF, The legalization dilemma, The Washington Post, April 4, 2012

4 comments:

  1. No, it is not a viable policy. Legalizing marjuana has benefits to patients suffering cancer, decrease anxiety, slows the progression of alzheimer and can help prevent blindness from glaucoma. With that said, marjuana is also less addictive than cocaine and methamphetamine. When mentioning cocaine and methamphetamine it has toxicating affects on the brain which causes tremendous damages. Legalizing those drugs has the potential to increase crime rate, impair health causing higher injury rates and more addictions.

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  2. Methamphetamine can treat obesity, attention disorder, narcolepsy, and at one time ADHD. According to Julien, R.M., Advokat, C.D., & Comaty, J.E. (2011), due to the negative reports it is rarely used now to treat ADHD. Methamphetamine is a stimulant drug that causes dramatically affects to the central nervous system and should not be legalize. Methamphetamine is a highly addictive drug with numerous side effects, with change of behavior, impairs judgment and reckless acts.

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  3. Maybe, I'm not in agreement with cocaine being legalized, but the other two maybe. I feel that if the drugs were legalized, then people wouldn't want it as much. A lot of times knowing that it's illegal or that you can't have something makes you want it even more.

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  4. During my time as a substance abuse counselor and a behavioral health professional, I use to wonder why people become addicted to certain chemicals and immune to others. The common denominator always seems to be “why an individual used the drug in the first place”. I believe, no matter the legal or illegal status of a drug, if an individual exposes themselves to a particular drug, they become susceptible to its effects. Methamphetamine should be used to treat issues if it works, but only under strict medical supervision. Morphine and Methadone is just as dangerous, but still being used medically.

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