Legal Drugs of Abuse and Law Enforcements Efforts at controlling all Drug Abuse
To ensure that the citizens of the United States of America remain healthy the war on illicit drugs and drug abuse has been intensified. The law enforcement authorities in addition to the drug courts have been on the forefront of assuring that America remains productive as its citizens do not engage in drug abuse. However, not all of the drugs are negative for human consumption or illegal. For instance, every year Americans consume thousands of cigarettes and other tobacco products in addition to alcoholic beverages. Despite the medical warnings that cigarettes and alcohol are harmful to the human body, these products are still legal (Lyman, 2007).
Ncjrs.gov. (2011) agrees with the fact that there are drugs that are considered condoling to the human body. It has become difficult to address the issues of reducing drug abuse as some of the drugs are legal in the US. For instance, it is known that tobacco smoking is harmful to the lungs, yet tobacco smoking is legal in the US. Issues of intoxicated drivers have been an issue that Law Enforcement authorities have had to deal with. However, it is hard to control drug use that may cause the abuse. It has been found that approximately 25 percent of the adult population gets prescription for psychotherapeutic drugs that have high potential abuse. Nowadays people engage in poly-substance use where they combine illicit drugs and prescribed medications (ncjrs.gov, 2011).
Of particular importance is the fact that chemists are creating new drugs and these drugs are not yet included in the code. This means that these drugs are not yet illegal and can be used by people. It means that the Law Enforcement should make great efforts to control the drug abuse. Therefore, Law Enforcement agencies cannot adequately deal with drug use and abuses when other new drugs are not put on the code. In fact, some of the new drugs are not well-known to the government agencies because no one is familiar with the effects it can cause.
Lawental (2013) states that such heavy drugs as Cocaine and Heroin are non-native for the North America. On the other hand, Marijuana is grown in the US and in other countries such as Mexico and Canada. It means that even if the US is not growing or manufacturing drugs internally, the neighboring countries that grow or produce these drugs supply them to the US and makes it difficult to control drug use and abuse. In the US, only 3 to 5 percent of all the shipments are inspected. This means that there are bigger loopholes that Law Enforcement agencies have to deal with, in controlling drug use and abuse.
While it has believed that most drugs abused are those that create a sense of excitement in those who use it, pain relieved drugs are also widely abused. The use of prescriptive drugs has increased steadily mostly because the pain relieved drugs are not marked as illegal drugs in the code. In addition, these drugs are sold in chemists and pharmacies legally meaning that anybody can access them. This issue makes it difficult for Law Enforcement and patrol agencies to adequately address the issues of drug use and abuse. Finding the source of drugs is a difficult issue because some of the drugs are supplied by relatives, friends, strangers, doctors or even from the internet (Lawental, 2013).
Therefore, controlling drugs in the US is a difficult process especially for Law Enforcement and patrol agencies due to the fact that certain harmful drugs are legal. Besides, it is difficult to find the source that produces drugs which are not in the code. All these issues among others make the effort of drug use and abuse control become difficult.
