Substance Abuse

Running head: SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Substance abuse
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Introduction:
The illicit use of drug or substance abuse is a long-standing issue in United States and its
prevalence is increasing day by day. Abuse of substances like tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs
cost about $740 billion annually in United States because of cost related to health care, crime and
lost productivity (National Institute of Drug Abuse, 2018). One of the legislative or legal
response to control drug use involves criminalization of specific substances. However, the
position or thesis statement for this paper is that criminalization of illegal substance use do not
control use of these drugs in society. The paper defends the thesis statement by providing
argument related to the stand taken and by focusing on one or two specific controlled substances.
Effort made by government in North America to control drug use
` In North America, cannabis is one of the major substances consumed by teenagers and
youth in large numbers. The 2017 Canadian Tobacco, Alcohol and Drugs Survey (CTADS)
revealed that 15% of Canadians report consuming cannabis in the past 12 months. In addition,
78% of Canadians consumed alcohol in the last one year. The alarming figure is that almost two-
third of Canadian reported consuming cannabis because of non-medical reasons (The Daily,
2017). Recent journal article by Grant and Bélanger (2017) reports cannabis as the most common
illicit drug used globally and frequently use by Canadian teenagers. The use of cannabis in young
age is associated with severe functional and structural damage to the brain. This may lead to
increase in depression, mood disorder and psychotic disorders. It results in diminished school
performance and poor lifetime achievement too (Hartman, Sreeram & Wilson, 2017).

2SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Personal position and arguments related to criminalization of illegal substances
To control use of cannabis for recreational purpose, the Canadian government took the
approach to impose strict legal framework for controlling the production, distribution, use and
possession of cannabis across Canada by the enactment of the Cannabis Act on June 9, 2018.
The three goals of the cannabis Act was to keep cannabis out of the hands of youth, reduce reach
of cannabis for criminals and protect public health. The Act also had criminalization component
as it imposed age restriction by restricting use and sale of cannabis to people less than 18 years
of age. Selling cannabis to youth and using youth to engage in cannabis related crime attracted
maximum penalties of 14 years in jail (Canada Department of Justice, 2018). Despite this form
of criminalization of drug, the personal position on the topic is that criminalization cannot lead to
control of illicit drug use. This can be said because criminalization does more harm than good for
the youths. This is because it opens many other pathways to access substances thus indulging
people to greater risk to get access to drugs. For example, such criminalization has the potential
to open black market so that people using drugs take greater risk to buy them. The research
article by Bender (2016) also defends against criminalization by stating that black market
continues to thrive in states where recreational marijuana has been criminalized. The drugs
available through black market are cheaper and poor people extremely dependent on the drug use
the black market to purchase the drug. Hence, the main purpose of criminalizing cannabis
remains unsolved unless other creative steps are taken to control drug use among already
addicted individuals.
The North America government action to strictly regulate access to cannabis by
legalizing cannabis suggests that the Canadian government has taken a public health approach to
reduce risk associated with illicit cannabis use. However, the positive benefits of criminalization