I can't remember a time I was so invested in politics as I am now. With the GOP in political turmoil, and the future of the country being unknown, I've been more involved with the debates and political discussions than ever before.

One of the bigger points of contention that keeps coming up is this notion that candidate Trump wants to build a colossal wall that would completely separate the United States from Mexico. While it's certainly an issue of immigration, one of the main purposes of this wall would be to stop the influx of drugs that find their way into our states. The idea is, that by building a wall, we'd be preventing drugs (heroine, most dangerously) from reaching our citizens. Political affiliation aside, I want to make a very clear distinction. Putting up a wall will not stop drugs from entering this country. Imagine you and a few friends were going to a pick up baseball game. You head toward the park, and you're almost at the diamond, but there's a huge fence going all around the outside. Well, you're not going to just stop and go home because there's something directly in front of you, are you? No, obviously not - you walk around, and even though it takes an extra minute to get in, you still get to the field. This is a very basic and fundamentalist analogy, but it's not exactly far off. Because the problem isn't the presence of drugs in the country. If you want to stop the excessive amounts of drug addiction and overdose in the country, you need to focus on the problem at its root: why people feel the need to buy and use heroine in the first place.

Let's take a step back and look at this for a second:

Thousands of people every single day are given heroine in various forms through the use of medical aids. Whether it's from a regular wisdom tooth removal surgery, or something more severe. Painkillers and opioids are regularly used to help deal with the symptoms of trauma. So, if heroine is the problem, why don't people become addicted to things like Morphine when they're being hospitalized?

Because our interpretation of what causes addiction is vastly outdated and is changing very rapidly, there are scientists now who believe addiction is a result of connection, or lack there of, in people. When we don't find that connection, our need spreads to other inanimate things that provide chemical support (aka dopamine). If you really want to stop the heroine problem in America, you don't need to put a wall up. You don't think drug cartels are smart enough to send in drugs another way? Shutting away other people has never been nor never will be the answer towards a united global effort. We need to help people, connect with people, and instead of shunning them, help them develop. A newborn baby will die if it's left alone without human contact. So why would we think this is a legitimate way to fix problems? Why do you think places like Portugal (which has completely decriminalized drug usage) are doing so much better now? Their jails are no longer littered with people who don't belong in there! In America, we have a lot of people in jail. People, of all races, that are in jail, right now, thinking they're a screw up, or the world has given up on them because they got in trouble with the law.

Guess what? These are predominantly people from poorer neighborhoods, and young adults at that. Young adults, like you or me, who are legitimately good people but have to live the rest of their life with a criminal record and with some unable to enter the workforce. Instead of helping people, we make them feel like they've done something irreversibly bad. Our policies essentially force those that break the law to continue doing so. Don't believe me? Try getting a job after you've been arrested. It's really, really hard, regardless of socioeconomic class. If you're interested in reading more about this, you can read more from the following study from 2008 at Urban Institute:(DO NOT INCLUDE IN PRINT)

That's the real war on drugs, people. You think there are people out there voting for the legalization of marijuana just because they want to get high? I vote for the legalization of weed because I have friends who are genuinely afraid for their future because they got arrested for something so trivial. As if alcohol, a legal drug, is any more detrimental than marijuana. So what's the alternative? Let's get the problem sorted out. Put some money into research, and really try to find out the true cause of addiction. You think the heroine market will continue if nobody is buying it anymore? We live in a free market system where consumers are supposed to regulate the market, correct?

We need to start changing the way we see the world. Everything you touch in this world has been shaped by the people around you. We can't stop drug addiction by putting up a wall, but we can by breaking them down. There have been legitimate studies on rats where rats are given the option of drinking water filled with opioids, or regular water - and in colonies where rats have everything they could ever want (food, other rats to reproduce with, objects to play with), they chose the regular water every time. Why? Because when people are happy, and they're connected with the people around them, our brains have healthy levels in our neurotransmitters, and the dopamine response won't develop dependency.

Shutting away other people has not, nor ever will be, a viable solution toward creating a united global effort. And anyone who chooses to lead with hate and segregation will never be as effective of a leader as one who leads with compassion. Because our world is people, it's about time we started acting like one species, undivided, with liberty and justice for all.