Changes

Illegal drugs are drugs that the government has declared to be illegal. This is often based on a perception, true or otherwise, that such substances can potentially cause damage to a person's [[brain]] and other organs. Equally there is concern about the fact that most drugs cause [[addiction]]. There is much debate over the legalisation legalization of drugs, people on both ends of the political spectrum are advocating for some drugs to be legalized while others on both ends are advocating for tougher penalties for possession of drugs. Some new age [[hippies]] believe drugs can separate one's body from one's soul, and native Americans believe drugs allow one to talk to trees; these are generally believed to be delusions caused by drugs' interference with neuro-activities current research <ref>http://www.psych.uiuc.edu/~bhidalgo/litreview.htm</ref> in the brainneuroscience has shown that psychedelic drugs can be used to induce religious experiences <ref>http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article1171389.ece</ref>.

Those in favour favor of legalising legalizing drugs often argue that the negative social consequences, including gang warfare and the permiation permeation of dangerously impure substances, are more to do with their prohibition than the drugs themselves. Indeed, before the criminalisation criminalization of heroin in the UK it was no more than a trivial medical problem <ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4647018.stm</ref>. Opponents of criminalisation criminalization also point to the [[Prohibition]] experiment in the USA, where the illegality of alchohol alcohol caused problems of gang warfare and unsupervised distilleries that made worse the very problem that prohibition was intended to solve. Further difficulties arise when various drugs are made illegal for political reasons; the most prominent of which being the illegalization of [[hemp]] to make way for the tree pulp industry. <ref>http://www.ylana.com/hempartc.htm</ref>

A small number of gateway drugs are legally tolerated in Western democracies. These include [[alcohol]], [[nicotine]] and [[caffeine]], whereas other drugs which have less adverse affect on the body, such as [[ecstacy]], are banned due to their social stigma.