If drugs were legalized, would law enforcement agencies benefit Essay

If drugs were legalized, would law enforcement agencies benefit - Essay Example was 1.3% in 1914, when drug availability restrictions were much more lax. In spite of the strict regulations and the vast amounts of money spent to prevent the free availability of substances that are misused this percentage of drug addiction has remained the same at the turn of the new millennium (Kane, 2000). The second key argument is more important from the perspective of law enforcement. According to this argument a lot of time, effort and money of law enforcement are currently wasted on cracking down on drugs, which could be better utilized on their other functions of crime prevention and crime detection to enable the citizens to live in a more peaceful environment. In essence this argument is for increasing the focus on crime prevention of law enforcement, instead if distracting it with the additional function of curbing the availability and misuse of drugs (Levinson, 2002). Even if the point on the law enforcement agencies efforts to curb availability and misuse of drugs is conceded that does not mean that legalizing drugs would allow the law enforcement agencies to concentrate more effectively on reducing crime and making the country more for safe for its inhabitants. This is because legalizing drugs will make them more freely available and increase the misuse of these drugs, leading to the consequences of increased misuse of drugs. One of the important outcomes of this increased misuse of drugs will be the increase in crimes particularly violent crimes. The increase in crime rates that it will in all probability overwhelm the enforcement agencies and instead of increased efficiency of crime fighting by the enforcement agencies, there will be a deterioration in their ability to cope with the increased number of crimes and the severity of these crimes. The final consequence would be reduced safety of the population of the country and more criticism of the law enforcement agencies (Wilson, 2002). This argument of increased