Discussion Board Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Discussion Board - Essay Example As the paper declares there is a tendency to ignore this growing social problem and the war on drugs has pushed the distribution of all kinds of drugs used into the hands of criminal elements of society. Decriminalization of drugs attempts to make drugs available through more legitimate channels with a degree of control and thereby remove distribution of drugs through the criminal elements. To understand the working of this measure an examination of its use in Holland would be useful. In Holland drugs have been classified into hard, which includes heroin, cocaine and ecstasy and soft, which is cannabis. In the case of cannabis the possession of small quantities for personal use is seldom held against the person having it, but more importantly it is the fact that cannabis has been made available through cafes and removes the criminal element from the distribution of cannabis. This essay stresses that the problem with this measure is that the use of the soft drug cannabis could lead to the use of hard drugs and hard drugs are still clamped down heavily in Holland. A possible way out of this is to make the hard drugs available at chemists and sold through prescriptions under strict regulations so that the involvement of criminal elements is removed. Still this does not remove the issue of the move from a soft drug like cannabis to a hard drug like heroin or cocaine by a soft drug user.