I think as a young person in an ever changing political climate my opinions on certain areas of government and politics change as I learn more about that world however I think politics really are full of what you can only call bullshit, with people always trying to stay on everyone's good side and lying and cheating to make that happen.
I believe that the government does have some duty to protect its people and enforce law however I think we all live in places that are full of too many laws that only result in people being unhappy, people feeling oppressed and feeling unsafe due to government controlled organizations. The government should be there to serve the people not the other way around and I think we are seeing many worldwide examples of how detrimental living in a nanny state can be, people need to be free to make their own decisions.
I think there are many big changes that governments need to make but one area that I think needs to be changed that can be changed with relative ease compared to how difficult any change is, is drug law and we have many examples to go off so it isn't an area that anyone would be going into blindly.
Ignorance in governments:
Currently in the world we really can look at everything a government would need to look at to see if a change could be made and the impact that such a significant change could have. I also think that in the UK where, I am from, we can see that the majority of the people in government have lived very sheltered lives when it comes to drugs, many politicians have an outlook that I see many children hold that shows how they evidently don't have an real understanding of what drugs are and how they work. Many politicians have the outlook that all drugs are bad and if you take them you will be an addict and you will die along with you being a bad person for taking drugs, that just goes to show the ignorance of people in power and it shows that they are unqualified to make drug laws. It is the same thing as putting the Brexit vote to a referendum, you are asking the public to vote on something that they do not understand at all and currently the government is voting on drug laws when they don't understand drugs at all.
I am a very pro choice and have been for the majority of my adult life, which isn't very long, I think if someone wants to do something to their own body they should be able to and if it comes to the point that they are considerably harming themselves then they should be offered help at which point specialists can determine if that person is suffering from some form of mental illness and then help can be given accordingly. However I believe that you have to understand that not everyone can be saved from themselves, some people don't want help and know matter how much it is given they won't accept it.
I think that is part of another issue which is the government trying to appear fair as if it is some mystical organization that always makes the correct decisions and when they make a decision it is final. When that is farm from the truth, any government is made up of people and people are ignorant, bigoted and often have a lack of understanding when it comes to their own psychology and why they think what they think and this is something true for everyone, there isn't such a thing as being perfect. It is the duty of the government to serve the people and at the moment we aren't seeing that in many ways and people need to change that, people need to call out the government on the fact that they are not perfect and that it is made of people and people make mistakes. However we are at a point where the government often seems to forget that it is there to serve the people, many decisions made by the government are made to grow the power of the government and the individuals within which is truly injustice.
Benefits of drugs:
Drugs are something that everyone takes, I have never met anyone that hasn't benefited from some form of drug use, recreational or medical, and I firmly believe that the current laws we have when it comes to drugs are massively hindering the potential that drugs have to help people. In an ideal world in my head all drugs would be decriminalized and if people wanted to take a drug they would be able to do so and any harm that comes to them from that would be on them because it is worth having that risk of people harming themselves to be able to help countless amounts of people that suffer from treatable illnesses.
When it comes to drugs so many things became illegal so quickly that people never had time to test them and find the best medicines they are capable of giving. This leaves us with a lot of good medicines but also a lot of medicines that are very harmful and often do more bad than good and they fix one thing but break something else, because making drugs illegal made us settle for what we have. Many forms of medicine we have today could be vastly improved if people could further research the drug they are derived from however people can't do that vital research because the drugs are so highly illegal even trained professionals can't test them.
I think that the stigma that drugs are bad is and has been massively detrimental to society for many reasons. I think any consenting adult should be able to use any drug they wish to use because they are an adult for one but also because when drugs are decriminalized they can be used more safely but further than that if you look back at the majority of human history humans have taken drugs and society didn't crumble from it, it even seemed to benefit society in many ways, so why try to block people from taking them? From the purely recreational side of drugs I think they should be legal because I think people should be able to choose what they want to put into their body, I mean governments let people eat fast food as much as they like even though it is detrimental to peoples overall health, including mental health because of the negative impact on gut bacteria, and the food is also pumped full of hormones that can cause people huge issues. So from the pro choice standpoint it seems crazy that other people can pick and choose what someone does to their own body.
From a more general standpoint if drugs as a whole were decriminalized, so not legalized to where they can be sold in shops, purely to the point where people won't be incarcerated for using them it would allow research to be done into the medical properties of various different chemical compounds which would likely result in lots of new medicines being found that could help solve illnesses that we can't currently cure and it could help us cure illnesses that we can already cure in a less harming way to the patient.
The negative impact of criminalized drugs:
I also don't see how people can claim the argument that it will tear society apart and destroy so many lives because there are countries out there where drugs are decriminalized, countries where many drugs are legal and then countries where any drug is highly illegal and the countries that decriminalize drugs often seem to do the best. For example in the UK their is undoubtedly a strong discontent toward the government and a huge frustration that peoples voices aren't being listened to which is also causing a lot of wider issues because people feel that even if the majority of the population band together it doesn't make a difference which leads to people give up which leads to discontent, which can then lead to people becoming depressed and unproductive.
Which sounds a bit crazy but things really do have a knock on impact in life and as a young person in the UK who knows many young people from all backgrounds I can say that one of the major factors leading to discontent in young people is the governments standpoint on drugs. Many people end up in prison because of drug related crime which tears apart families and causes discontent and sadness among the surrounding community, when people see their friends essentially being harassed by police due to drug offences it makes people feel anger toward police and it means when they are in trouble they won't call police they will go at it alone and get themselves into more trouble continuing the cycle. Also the majority of the population is for the legalization of many drugs but the main one being cannabis for medical purposes, about 70% of people are pro, this shows that the government that is meant to serve the people often chooses to serve themselves first causing more discontent. It makes people feel like even if they band together they can't make change, so they give up trying and become unhappy with life because they feel a lack of control and self worth. The UK is generally a very sad country about 50% of people are considered discontent or unhappy with their life and a lot of that can be attributed to drug law.
A range of legality:
If we look at an example of one of the most strict places in the world when it comes to drugs we have the Philippines where citizens are actively encouraged to essentially kill anyone they see involved in drugs and multiple people are killed ever night by police in drug related incidents. The majority of people in the world would agree that the harsh standpoint they have on drugs is completely insane and the only way it will make a difference in the long run is to kill every single person involved in drugs and it will likely make a difference not because the drugs are not there but because of the drop in population, and lower population density in poor communities but again as most people agree genocide is not a good way to solve issues even if it does solve issues. For example I'm sure if an Avengers type situation happened where half the world population was killed at random it would take a lot of pressure of natural resources meaning poverty would be able to be solved, however it is a disgusting criminal way to go about things and anyway does it not promote more violence than drugs would in the first place? As i'm sure the Philippines will have many issues in the close future due to so many people being involved in or witnessing the mass murder of their people.
Then we can also look at countries that decriminalize or are decriminalizing certain drugs and over time it fixes many issues including prison overpopulation which means more tax payers money can go into other areas that are deemed necessary, it allows the police force to tackle more violent crime and makes people more comfortable around the police and it makes people more satisfied with whom ever governs them.
If we look at Portugal they decriminalized drugs over 15 years ago and since that point they have seen many benefits, one of which being shown by the chart below where you will find Portugal at the bottom with the least amount of drug-induced deaths per million people in European countries.
One of the most dangerous parts of the drug world are the legal highs, which are essentially experimental or synthetic drugs that are new to that market that haven't had any testing and haven't been around for long enough to be restricted and in Portugal hardly any legal highs are used because people don't feel the need to go out of their way to find the experimental chemicals when they won't be put in prison for taking other drugs, and legal highs cause large numbers of deaths in other European countries.
It also has allowed there to be more treatment facilities for addicts to help people come off very addictive substances and rebuild their lives, for the most part the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal has been widely beneficial.