Drugs
Ah, drugs... the ‘big bad’ scouring our nation. We’re warned about them from the moment we step into a middle school health class, and their destructive effects are no secret to anyone who’s dealt with them firsthand. But drugs cover a wide range of substances; not just the addictive, psychoactive kind that comes to most people’s minds when they hear the word. The strawberry melatonin gummies you take at night to sleep are just as much of a drug as the cocaine your neighbor snorts in their backyard: both affect on the brain's functionality to some degree. When coming up with a policy plan, we must take
all kinds of drugs into account, and look at them from an objective standpoint, informed by how they can both help & harm us.
While I don’t entirely agree with the semantics of the term ‘hard drugs’, I think the most important thing to tackle when dealing with the ‘harder’ ones that tend to be the most scrutinized by our government is to decriminalize, but
not to enable. A common attitude seems to be that putting junkies behind bars is the best way to curb this crisis. If they can’t access the substance they’re addicted to, surely that must help them recover, right? The prevalence of this idea could be chalked up to the fact most people simply don’t want to see human suffering so close to them; or if I were being more cynical, a simple lack of compassion. However, this line of thinking ignores the fact that addictions just don’t really work that way. The NADCP conducted a study where they found that 95% of drug addicts in jail come to use again upon exoneration, and furthermore, that many of those same people will go on to commit
new crimes related to their addiction. An article written by a recovery lodge notes that “most prisons and jails fail to provide the appropriate support for those with addictions.” The cumulative $80 billion spent yearly funding public & private prisons could be funneled into resources that actually help these people get their lives together, instead of something that only sets them back even further. The American Addiction Center notes that “when incarcerated individuals receive comprehensive drug or alcohol treatment in prison and then follow up with continued care upon their release, their drug use declines by 50-70% as compared to individuals who do not receive treatment.”
Education
Few things are more closely tied to the security, prosperity, and health of a nation than the quality of the education received by those inside it. Going to university is one of the biggest things you get hyped up about in high school, and according to a survey done last year, over two-thirds of high schoolers want to continue their schooling after graduation. Unfortunately, though, financial barriers have proven time and time again to be the number one reason why many people choose not to pursue college. Not only can in-state tuition push the $10,000s, over 70% of college students graduate with some kind of debt. This is especially disenfranchising for students from poor families who may be put even further in the red from college expenses. To me, this is yet another facet of how capitalism prevents the disempowered from doing anything about their disempowerment. Because public colleges that run on federal funding trend on the less-costly side compared to private, for-profit ones, I believe a good way to solve this issue would be to follow suit of countries like Germany and take the economic benefits & well-being provided from quality education as a reason to allocate more funds to schools. This way, free education is ensured for everyone while retaining the same (or even better) quality.
Social Justice
Because social justice is inherently, well…
social, I believe the biggest thing in ensuring progress can be achieved is to prioritize mindful listening & understanding in spaces of discussion, rather than outrage as a kneejerk reaction to unfamiliar ideas. This is going to be more opinion-based on my part, but I think a lot of why more politically polarized people are so unwilling to accept things that don’t align with their worldview is due to the inherent fear humans have of the unknown. When we encounter something we don’t understand, our immediate response is to feel confused, disgusted, or even angry and upset. We don’t always have the self-control to contain our negative emotions, and when that happens, it can have destructive results that end up setting us back even further than when we started. If people were more encouraged to sit down and listen to each other in constructive environments – perhaps through a government-funded program or something of that nature – it could streamline the process of people getting on the same page; therefore bolstering progressiveness & much of what my ideal government advocates for in society.
Environment
We’re constantly hearing about how the earth is burning around us. You’ve probably heard of the estimation that the global temperature will warm another 1.5 degrees by 2050 — among other apocalyptic-sounding estimations — which is something major organizations concerned about science have been trying to warn us about for years. Ice caps are melting at record rates, sea levels are rising, and summers are getting hotter & more oppressive with every year. Even so, with corporations eating through power, politicians like Donald Trump spreading climate deniability, and a general attitude of apathy & cynicism held by many, it seems more and more like much of the world around us doesn’t care that it’s on fire.
America, in particular, is one of the biggest contributors to climate change; being second only to China in carbon dioxide emissions. While this is not at all good, there is a silver lining in that it means we’re one of the countries that can do the most to help — assuming we act quickly and efficiently. For one, the government ought to enforce cap-and-trade policies on megacorporations, which place strict limits on their emissions. Funds from heavier-levied carbon taxes could also be invested into integrating renewable energy sources into our country’s infrastructure, to a degree where we may one day be able to rely on them independently. The government also should take an active role in research & development by prioritizing the funding of scientific bureaucratic organizations to conduct their studies.
Additional things we can enforce include…
- Climate resilience planning. Making sure cities and states have the proper infrastructure and backlog to deal with climate crises if and when they occur.
- Funding green transportation. This may be more difficult to enforce, given our infrastructure’s heavy reliance on cars and pressure from the gas industry on government agencies to keep things that way, but it’s certainly not impossible. This can range from everything to promoting carpooling and public transport, to funding electric cars and building more charging stations for them, and much more.
- Foreign agreements. If we can encourage other countries to follow in our footsteps, through things like UN meetings, the progressive measures we take could have even greater of an impact on the rest of the earth.
Cybersecurity
Living in a digital age means more and more details of our lives are stored in microchips, servers, in the cloud, and floating elsewhere in cyberspace. We often take for granted just how large of a digital footprint we have, especially with how normalized social media is as a place to share even the most minute details about yourself, and the advent of algorithms and targeted advertising make things all the more insidious. Tech literacy isn’t a skill everyone possesses, either — if you’re anything like me, you’re probably guilty of clicking “allow cookies” on a website, without knowing they weren’t referring to the delicious baked kind. Lots of companies know this about people, and use it to their advantage. This is why ensuring digital privacy remains as much of a right as its physical counterpart is more crucial in our day and age than ever.
In order to ensure this, the government ought to be more strict on social media corporations when it comes to disclosing their privacy policies; as well as the measures they take to prevent things like data leaks, DDoS attacks, and more. Regular security audits should be performed during server maintenance so that faults in a system’s security are caught early before they can be exploited (and potentially made worse). Recent events like the integration of data-scraping on Instagram for meta to train their new AI service also bring up questions about opting out, and placing restrictions on how convoluted corporations should be allowed to make such processes.
