ABSTRACT

Problems involving youth are often addressed through schools. Drug addiction involves biological, psychological, social, economic, and cultural factors. The main problem with drugs and alcohol is that they are addictive, which can lead to destructive behaviors, and long-term addiction has serious health risks. Everyone benefited when alcohol was legalized after Prohibition: crime went down, people did not die or become paralyzed from bad alcohol, tax revenues went up, alcohol producers went into business, social drinkers no longer had to break the law. An ordinance against opium in San Francisco in 1875 was one of the country's first drug laws. Meanwhile, patent medicines, readily available around the country, commonly included heroin, morphine, and cocaine. Most people in the United States, however, are not directly affected—except that their taxes are consumed by the exorbitant costs of policing the drug traffic and housing criminal offenders.