The work is to be 5 pages with three to five sources, with in-text citations and a reference page

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The work is to be 5 pages with three to five sources, with in-text citations and a reference page. Being a complex as well as a self-regulating system, society has designed several measures in order to limit the negative impact of the actions of its citizens. That is the main goal of the legal system. However, sometimes the citizens are willing to introduce changes into what should be legal and what should not be legal. A good example is the legalization of recreational drugs.&nbsp.

To begin with, it would be highly advantageous to define some of the key terms that will be used in this paper. The first one is decriminalization. It is clear that this word is derived from criminalization, but with a negative prefix. So, the basic definition of decriminalization would focus on the lack of criminal punishment for the use of the drugs in question. Thus, it may not be a criminal offense to smoke cannabis, but it will be a crime to distribute it. On the other hand, legalization is focused on the state when all the actions that are carried out with the drugs are not considered to be illegal. While these terms seem to be similar, there should not be mixed together. Finally, recreational drugs are the category of drugs that are supposed to stimulate positive experience (feelings, state of mind of the user, etc.).

First of all, the legitimacy of the need to prohibit recreational drugs is deeply rooted in that those substances are able to harm a considerable number of people. From a broad perspective, it may be justified by the following logic, which was expressed by Mills: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others” (“Ethics in practice: an anthology”, 2014, 295). The harm that the author is talking about might be seen in the negative effects on the organism of the drug users (Hyde & Setaro, 2009, 119). It must be noted that the war on drugs should be declared as a social policy rather than a particular initiative of law enforcement agencies (Leuw & Marshall, 1994, 249).