Escape from Reality
             The request for legalizing drugs has entered the mainstream of public debates in recent years, mostly focusing on marijuana. Some countries around the world have allowed laws, not so much to abolish, as to bend the use of drugs. Countries such as the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Switzerland have all ventured down the legalization of drugs and have made it almost impossible to be arrested if one buys, sells, and uses drugs. The criminal rate related to drug use has gone down in recent years, proving very beneficial if the U.S. comes to the decision to legalize a controlled amount of drug use. Obviously, there are many problems with drug use in America but if drugs were legalized many of the problems that affect society daily would be a thing of the past.
             Initially, the concept that makes drugs so tempting is the fact that it is not permitted. Human nature wants to break the rules for the adrenalin rush of having the chance of being "caught." No longer would there be an interest to the act of smoking a little bit of marijuana or snorting cocaine if that chance were gone. The criminal rate related to drug use in European countries has gone down remarkably since their laws have changed. In one report," Switzerland, supposedly shows that keeping addicts on heroin prevents them from committing crimes and using other drugs" (Klebler and Rosenthal).
             Thus, making it not so dangerous once one has taken the desire out of the drugs, and giving another reason legalization will benefit the lives of our citizens is that teens will no longer have to go to the dangerous streets to get drugs. This automatically saves our children from having to deal with the criminals who try to be above the law. "Over twenty million Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five have tried cocaine, but only a quarter million use it daily. From this you can conclude that at most three percent of all ...