郭慶民閱讀理解第二篇及譯文與疑難長句注解和題解
Should the United States end its three-quarters-of-a-century-long prohibition on drugs? Outraged by the seemingly endless deaths, violence, crime, corruption, border searches, and social costs generated by world drug trafficking, a growing number of public officials and scholars are arguing that it is time to consider the possibilities of selective drug legalization. The legalization argument rests on the proposition that drug laws—not drugs themselves—cause the greatest harm to society. If drugs were legal, the argument goes, drug black markets worth tens of billions of dollars would evaporate, the empires of drug traffickers would collapse, and addicts would stop committing street crimes to support their habit. But legalization would not only take the profit out of drug trafficking. Presumably police officers, courts, and prisons would no longer be overwhelmed with drug cases. And the nation would be spared the poisoning strains on its relations with important and otherwise friendly Latin American and Asian nations.
Most advocates of legalization do not condone, let alone want to encourage, drug use. Rather they believe that making drugs a criminal matter has made the problem worse. They acknowledge that the nation would still have massive public health problems on its hands, but it would not be compounded by a massive crime problem, a massive corruption problem, and a massive foreign policy problem. Government could also tax the sale of drugs and use the proceeds to finance drug prevention and treatment programs. And civil libertarians cite another benefit: an end to violations of basic individual freedom, such as drug testing, that derive from excessive zeal for winning the drug war. In any event, proponents of legalization say the war on drugs is doomed. So long as there is demand for cocaine, heroin, and other drugs, someone is going to supply them, legally or illegally.
Opponents of legalization regard the abandonment of antidrug laws as a frightening and dangerous policy, one morally equivalent to giving societal approval to what currently is taboo behaviour. With the legal stigma gone, opponents say, more law-abiding citizens would be tempted to experiment with drugs. More-over, highly damaging substances would be cheaper, purer, and more widely available, thus causing a sharp jump in addiction, hospital costs, overdose deaths, family and social violence, and property damage. Now, at least, the expense and danger of purchasing illegal drugs limit the amount most people use.
There is little information available that sheds light on what would happen to American society if cocaine and heroin were legalized. Indeed, the idea of legalization has been so far outside the realm of popular acceptance that virtually no financing of research into its potential effects has taken place. Of interest, however, is the fact that both advocates and opponents of drug legalization look to the nation's experience with Prohibition as providing ammunition for their respective cases.
