speaking truth to power

I always love a week that talks about the role media plays. I know how important media is, but I don't think about it so consciously until I get to these readings. I interact with media so frequently that it's just a part of my daily life to check the news for the recent happenings.
Whenever the war on drugs is brought up, I always like to refer to a study done in Vancouver by Bruce Alexander called Rat Park. Here's the wikipedia article on it, but he basically took rats out of isolation and built a utopia for them where they got to run and play and they had the choice of drinking opiate-laced water or just regular water and none of the rats developed a dependency on the opiate water because they had a solid social structure.
I think my favourite part of this article is that it helped to sway Portugal into legalizing all forms of drugs. You can buy marijuana and heroin at the grocery store. I believe that this is one of the solutions to ending the war on drugs, by legalizing them all. It will reduce drug-related violence, especially in occasions of "deals gone bad" and will take money out of the hands of criminals trying to sell their own drugs, which could be laced with potentially deadly chemicals.
How do you think the war on drugs can be solved? Do you think there's a way for complete criminalization to work?

Comments

  1. Unknown21 November 2017 at 23:38

    Hi Thalia, I like that you've taken this week's topic to a really interesting direction!

    With regards to your question, I think you're on the right track in thinking that the legalization of drugs could "end" the war on drugs. Although I do have reservations about whether a full elimination of drug-related violence is possible, even given the legalization of all types of drugs, I think that the greater control over drug distribution and drug use (through legalization) is a good place to start.

    I also think that handling the numerous factors that often influence drug abuse, things such as unemployment and a lack of healthier/more effective coping strategies, is a good starting point of solving the war on drugs.

    Overall, awesome post!

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