Recently, an annual marijuana legalization festival took place in Prague. The effort to force legalization of marijuana is something I fully support — and it appears that with time, that goal may finally be achieved, as society becomes more tolerant of marijuana. My (rather controversial) view, however, is that we could go even further. In this article, I would like to briefly explain to you why I support the legalization of all drugs – starting with nicotine, which is already legal, and ending with heroin. And while this topic seems crazy to most people, it makes sense to me from a future doctor's perspective, as well as from an economic, moral, and human perspective. So before you condemn my opinions after these lines, keep reading. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Drugs are drugs and drugs are drugs Drugs are drugs and drugs are drugs – they only differ in the words, but the principle is the same. Drugs and medicines are, by definition, all substances implanted in the body and capable of modifying one or more of its functions. The only difference is that the use of some of these physiologically active substances is illegal. History tells us that heroin was originally used as a remedy for pain and coughs. Cocaine was commonly used as a local anesthetic. Nowadays it would be obsolete to use in these regions these substances that we call medicines, because we have more effective and safer medicines. In other areas of medicine, however, certain psychoactive substances seem to be able to reappear in therapy. In the Czech Republic, psychiatric research took place in the 1970s on LSD – a substance that may have great potential in this area. However, research was halted by the banning of LSD, although LSD is a very safe drug in many respects – it creates no addictive potential, it is non-toxic; you can't overdose on it (even a very high dose of LSD won't kill you); by taking more and more doses in a short interval, its psychoactive effectiveness decreases (which motivates the user to take a break between doses). Today, attitudes towards psychoactive substances around the world are improving again, and even in the field of psychedelics there is talk of a "renaissance". MDMA (called ecstasy) is in the late stages of drug testing in the United States – and it appears that with psychotherapy and the appropriate setting, it is very effective for post-traumatic stress disorder where d Other medications fail. At the Czech National Institute of Mental Health, experiments are underway with the hallucinogen psilocybin, which could help patients with depression in the future. MDMA, psilocybin and LSD are substances with enormous scientific and therapeutic potential for psychiatric patients. But their problem is the stigma of being illegal. However, benzodiazepines (other addictive psychoactive substances) are used by thousands of people to sleep well or to tranquilize and Neurol tablets, Xanax, Dormica and similar products are considered absolutely automatic. This makes no sense when alcohol is legal. and LSD is not. Although there are many tables comparing drugs to each other and showing that alcohol, caffeine and nicotine are, in some respects, drugsvery serious, they are socially tolerated drugs and little regulated by the State. ” and “heavy” drugs which I consider unfortunate because each substance can be light or heavy in completely different ways. It is therefore possible to use more measures to compare psychoactive substances and their dangers – the addiction potential, the harm to the user, the harm to the user's environment and the relationship between the effective dose and the lethal dose. The first graph I present compares the drug addiction potential (on the vertical axis; so the higher the substance, the greater the addiction potential it has) and the effective/lethal dose ratio (on the horizontal axis; the further to the left the substance is, the more difficult it is – in the case of LSD it is impossible – to overdose and die from the substance). It is worth mentioning that even caffeine is worse in both aspects than LSD and psilocybin; MDMA (ecstasy) and ketamine are better than alcohol. It is also important to say that the potential for addiction is difficult to measure and I think it is also very individual. It may therefore happen that a person never becomes physically dependent on nicotine but, on the contrary, after trying methamphetamine, must take another dose. The second horizontal axis graph compares the harmfulness of drugs for the user's body. Again, marijuana, ecstasy and LSD are better than alcohol, not counting benzodiazepines, which are now used by thousands of people in the Czech Republic to combat anxiety and sleep. On the vertical axis we compare the harmfulness to the user's environment – ​​here alcohol is on the same level as heroin (although in the case of heroin it is so high probably simply because of crime associated with the high price of the dose). With alcohol, we are used to situations where some people – after a few drinks – fight; in this regard, alcohol is clearly one of the worst drugs. It is important to note that, both in the case of alcohol and other drugs, much depends on the dose, the quantity consumed. A beer can be used to help sleep well, and microdoses of LSD are being tested by users around the world to increase concentration and performance at work. The two drugs can have different effects if consumed in large quantities. Drug prohibition costs money and doesn't work. Drug prohibition and the “war on drugs” have a significant impact on public finances around the world. Above all, it concerns the cost of fighting crime, with drug trafficking being seen as a criminal activity. To analyze the effectiveness of the war on drugs, the United States is the best, because it has clear data over the last forty years that is not affected by changes in the political system as is the case in Europe . American drug policy has not changed significantly over the years. This chart tracks the situation in the United States by summarizing data from the Department of Health and Human Services and the International Center for Drug Policy Science. It shows the evolution of the number of drug addicts and the cost of the war on drugs. From this graph we can conclude that the increasing cost of drug prohibition does not affect the number of people addicted. Analyzing the impact of alcohol prohibition in the years 1920 to 1933 can also be very useful in understanding the issues, where it was possibleobserve the direct effects of the brutal ban and then the consequences of legalization after the end of the ban. With the total prohibition of alcohol, not only did consumption not decrease overall, but it was even higher than in 1918. A similar parallel could be that of the marijuana market in the Czech Republic, because although It is illegal to sell it, it is very easy to obtain, it is socially tolerated and the Czech Republic is one of the countries where marijuana consumption among young adults is the highest. The black market creates substances that can be dangerous even to responsible consumers. And for the irresponsible, they are more destructive. This makes sense: in a market that is not legal, you have a very limited number of places to get the drug, because the costs in the drug market are enormous (not only the financial costs, but also the costs). also the potential risk of being caught). Responsible people wait for a certified supplier, listen to the reference to the quality of the substance and, after receiving it, often test the chemical composition. Less responsible individuals will settle for faster delivery and often even a lower price. In these cases, life can be endangered, because the medicine can be supplemented with an unknown and harmful substance. It is also possible that the client will be given another drug – they may not be ready for this and the resulting experience can be frightening and very negative. As Mark Thornton says in his book on the consequences of greater alcohol prohibition, dark markets, secret online stores, are an interesting case (and an example of a free market in drugs). Drug traffickers have a profile here and compete with each other. Anyone who offers a bad medicine will therefore have a bad reference and will lose customers. Black markets are actually a competitive market, although if you run a black market you may go to jail very quickly and for a long time (simply because you allowed people to trade with each other). Society is uneducated about drugs and is deliberately manipulated. We want our loved ones, our own children and even society as a whole to behave responsibly; we want them to see the consequences of their actions. It is no different when it comes to drugs. However, education about illegal substances is poor. In a manipulative way, primary school children learn many lies when adults try to scare them – and sometimes even unintentionally, because they themselves have heard many illusions about drugs. Children learn that marijuana is a gateway drug and that anyone who tries a heavy drug finds themselves on the margins of society. This is in complete contrast to the fact that drinking alcohol (i.e. a heavy drug) is not so bad according to society, and some families have the habit of offering the child a drink of beer for Sunday dinner. And while adults and children have a pretty good understanding of when alcohol use is a problem, when it comes to drugs, it's a big unknown. Some teenagers try marijuana. They find out that it's nothing terrible, although it is illegal, and many people scare them. So... how should they have respect for other illegal drugs when with marijuana nothing dramatic has happened? Nescience is a big risk in the case of drugs, because when you are properly educated, many illegal drugs should not be significantly more dangerous than legal drugs. drugs. I can.