The issues surrounding drug legalization are complicated and sensitive. Each year drug use kills about 14,000 Americans and costs taxpayers approximately $70 billion. Drug-related illnesses and crime costs an estimated $67 billion per year. Drug use also influences worker productivity as seventy-one percent of all illicit drug users are eighteen and older and employed. Also impacted is public safety. A 1993, study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicated that eighteen percent of 2,000 deaths from seven states had drugs, other than alcohol, in their systems when they died. Ironically, some citizens still support the idea of drug legalization of certain drugs, including marijuana and Schedule I drugs (“A Police Chief’s Guide to the Legalization Issue”, May 8, 2001. Justice Department, Drug Enforcement Administration). The use of drugs is universal. By the nineteenth century in America, drugs were widely available. Narcotics such as heroin and cocaine were recommended as remedies for everything from hay fever and sinusitis to depression. In fact, cocaine was an active ingredient in Coca-Cola for a brief time. This common availability led to many Americans becoming addicts. The increasing number of addicts led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which required that certain drugs be listed as ingredients on products.In 1914, the federal government went even further when it approved the Harrison Act. This act required anyone distributing or possessing certain drugs to register with the federal government and pay taxes on the products. Subsequently, this led to several states outlawing narcotics altogether. In 1919, the Supreme Court used the Harrison Act as a catalyst to make the prescribing of narcotics by doctors to known addicts to support their habits illegal.Marijuana was a legal drug in the United States until 1937, when Congress passed the Marijuana Act...
