Drug-Related Crimes

While man has understood the principle of “better living through chemistry” since time immemorial, the problem of the economic impact of drug-related crime is a comparatively recent phenomenon.

To begin from the observation that illegal drugs are only so because of a social construction with punitive consequences is to recognize that the (economic) problem of drug-related crime is one that man has brought on himself. This process of classification has meant that some drugs, necessarily beginning with those natural substances that existed long before drugs began to be synthesized in labs in the 19th century, have always been legal or acceptable. For example, marijuana, the ongoing lightning rod in the debate on the legalization of drugs, has been legally used for medicinal purposes in China for ...