User:Minidoxigirli/recreational drug use

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In many cases, the possession and use of common recreational drugs violates the law; this is often considered an exercise in hypocrisy, in that alcohol, tobacco, and various over-the-counter and prescription medications with a high potential for abuse (such as OxyContin, benzodiazepines, and cough suppressants containing the hallucinogenic drug dextromethorphan) are not only legal, regulated and taxed by the government in regards to their distribution, but actively encouraged in some respects.

Many consider legal restrictions placed on drug use to be misguided, in that they prohibit what some consider to be victimless crimes. Compared to many illegal drugs alcohol has a high potential for increasing aggressive behavior, causing car accidents, and causing overdose deaths (commonly called alcohol poisoning).

Scientific research with illicit substances has also been made difficult due to the restrictions placed upon them, although some of them have documented medicinal properties (medical cannabis, for example, is quite popular in this field and effective in treating many disorders, and psychedelics such as LSD and MDMA may be highly effective in psychedelic psychotherapy treatments).

This attitude is less prevalent in parts of western Europe—see Drug policy of the Netherlands—and more recently in Canada, where enforcement of extant legal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana and other so-called "soft drugs" such as hallucinogenic mushrooms are increasingly ignored or given a low priority by law enforcement officials.

This attitude stands in marked contrast to the official policy of the United States government, which declared a "War on Drugs" under President Richard Nixon in 1972 which later intensified under Ronald Reagan, but saw its greatest increases (in budget, and in the number of arrests and prosecutions) under President Bill Clinton. The United States is considered far more stringent than other nations about enforcing penalties for "soft drug" use. The Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, is primarily responsible for illegal drug interdiction at the federal level. Despite the application of billions of dollars to eliminate the use of illegal drugs, recreational drug use remains common in the United States, and according to some studies is actually more common than in Europe where the laws are more relaxed (although, as stated, prescription drugs are abused in much greater numbers, and given almost no concern by the DEA whatsoever). Millions of illicit drug users exist in the United States who have never faced prosecution. Many American police officers don't bother enforcing possession laws on those holding small quantities of "soft drugs".

In Asia penalties vary from country to country, but can be even stricter than in the West. For example, under Singapore law, drug trafficking in over 15 g of heroin carries a mandatory death penalty.

Some theorize that the taboos on recreational drugs add an aura of mystique to their use, and encourage experimentation (i.e., the "forbidden fruit" phenomenon). This phenomenon was prevalent in the 1920s during the American alcohol prohibition. It is argued that the dangers of illicit drugs are widely exaggerated (especially in regards to marijuana, with most of its purported negative effects being routinely dismissed as junk science) causing some users to believe that only experimentation can give the user a sense of knowledge of the true dangers of a drug's side effects and addictive properties. An unfortunate side effect of this is that, considering that anti-drug education programs exaggerate the negative effects of illicit substances, some young people feel that the effects of more dangerous substances (such as methamphetamines) have been exaggerated as well.

Some societies have moved to abandon attempts to prohibit recreational drugs, and instead have turned to a policy of harm reduction by informing users of ways to reduce common risks associated with popular drugs. Harm reduction is the official policy of the Netherlands, Brazil, and some areas of Canada such as Vancouver, which have stopped actively prosecuting end users of recreational drugs. Instead, law enforcement efforts focus on capturing illegal dealers of "hard drugs", such as heroin and cocaine, passing out clean needles to intravenous (IV) drug users, and providing medical assistance for addicted users who wish to stop taking drugs.

Many currently legal recreational drugs (examples: alcohol, tobacco and caffeine) have been subject to prohibition throughout history, and likewise most of the currently illegal recreational drugs have been legal as recently as the early twentieth century such as with heroin, cocaine and marijuana, or even later for some newer synthetic chemicals such as LSD.