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Are Our Drug Laws Working?

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Submitted By irwalker
Words 1683
Pages 7
Iris Walker Kathy Anderson English 1020 02/12/2012
Are our drug laws working

I will be discussing drug-related crimes, besides what the financial burden is in our society. Additionally, I will bring out how two countries, the Netherlands and Portugal, addressed their drug problems in relation to crime. I do not believe that our drug laws are working because neither crime nor costs are going down.
Below is an excerpt that explains the relationship between drugs and crime:
Economic-Related:
Economic crimes include those that are committed by drug users in order to support additional drug use. These crimes may not be inherently violent, but may become violent. The strongest indicator in classifying crimes of this nature is that the offender committed the crimes as a result of his or her compulsion to obtain drugs (Goldstein, Brownstein, & Ryan, 1992).
Recent articles on national statistics related to such crimes include: * According to Substance Abuse and Treatment, State and Federal Prisoners, 1997, nineteen percent (19%) of State prisoners and sixteen percent (16%) of Federal inmates reported that they committed their most current offense to obtain money for drugs (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997). * The percent of jail inmates who committed their offense to get money for drugs totaled about thirteen (13%). Among those inmates who committed their offense to obtain money for drugs, almost twelve percent (12%) committed violent offenses and nearly twenty-five percent (25%) committed property offenses (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000).
System-Related:
These crimes include those that are directly or indirectly related to the system of drug trafficking and distribution, which frequently tend to be associated with the commission of violent crimes. Therefore, these include not only violations such as drug possession and/or manufacturing,

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