Human’s war on drugs, especially opioid drugs, never stops. Most countries face the overt or covert war on drugs and many announce that obtaining excess opioid drugs, or a step further, heroin, is illegal.
In China, actually only a few people are prescribed opioid drugs when they are facing extreme pains. And because of strict regulations on drugs, ordinary people have no access to the drugs, though there are some news reports that movie stars or sports stars use drugs to get high. When people are caught using or holding or selling drugs, they will be sentenced to a long time in jail and huge fines or even to death. This is the reason why criminal gangs of drugs are not a severe problem in China. So people having drugs are mostly from the dark side of society, like gang members, or from the upper level, like celebrities.
In the United States, the circumstance is well described by the phrase “the opioid epidemic”. Due to excess prescriptions on opioid drugs, people gradually get addicted to opioids, some even seeking for heroin because it’s cheaper and more powerful. People charged by using or holding a small amount of heroin will face tens of months in jail, a comparatively short time if compared to China. It’s really hard to keep clean for a long time, most heroin addicts collapse after several months and then are put into jail again. This loop will never end. Now different states have devised different ways to handle the problem, to find a balance between putting addicts into jail and educating them to keep clean. According to statistics, most addicts are white people and middle-class people. They have money to buy drugs. This circumstance is quite different from China and the Philippines mentioned below. In my opinion, we should on one hand popularize the education on drugs, especially the outcomes of using drugs, like ruining the whole family, and on the other hand, keep strict rules and strong punishments for those who frequently use drugs. Because people using drugs for many times are nearly impossible to get out and they may influence younger generations when they deal with others on drugs in the streets. For example, teenagers may imitate their behavior, or these addicts may even try to sell drugs to teenagers and schools will be contaminated by drugs. So keeping tight on those people is significant for making a good social environment for younger generations, this is the basis of our hope that drug problems will be solved in the next few generations. Also we still don’t want to just abandon those addicts. There are some special clinics selling some not that powerful and harmful drugs to addicts to help them still live a normal life.
The last country I want to refer to in this post is the Philippines. The president announced a whole-country war on drugs in 2016, urging members of the public to kill criminals and drug addicts. In this country, most addicts are from poor communities. And because of the great power of criminal gangs there, drugs are cycled in these poor communities. In the president’s own words, “the war is towards criminal groups and the poor’’. However, when police power is extensively used, there are always situations where police don’t respect the suspects’ human rights. And sometimes, police might kill some suspects who should not be sentenced to death. The war is still on, and I need to admit that it is really hard to balance punishing and educating drug users.
Finally, I think the United Nations should obtain more power to handle transnational criminal problems. This is the greatest source of drugs, the demands and supplies will influence each other. At the same time, making more efforts on educating and punishing criminals to lower the demands will help a lot.
