If you’ve been paying even a small amount of attention to current events lately, you know that drugs have entered the national conversation in a big way. Marijuana legalization has become a rallying cry for many of us, though even the states where it’s already legal may have a complicated battle ahead of them to keep that privilege.

Despite all of the fervent media coverage, however, there remain several overlooked components in the worldwide conversation about drug use and trafficking.

To put it mildly, our drug habits have had a significant impact on the environment. I’m not even talking about climate change – that politically inconvenient truth – but, rather, smaller-scale problems that nevertheless will continue to take a significant toll on the natural world as well as our health.

Here, in brief, is a look at some of those problems.

Deforestation

Most of us are only too keenly aware of the diminishing rainforests in places like South America – we’ve been hearing about it for years – but the complete truth is not nearly so widely known.

As it turns out, drug traffickers have been driving deforestation for a very long time. According to the World Wildlife Fund, drug traffickers regularly clear “prime” forests to make room for staging areas and hidden runways.

Honduras is a particularly worrying case study; in 2011, the country’s rate of deforestation nearly tripled, reaching a new high of 190 square kilometers. It has fallen again in recent years, but it remains a too-recent memory.

Unfortunately, very similar problems can also happen much closer to home. Many of America’s national parks have become home to drug manufacturers and traffickers of all kinds, and the problems range from pollution to deforestation and even brush fires.

Indoor Cultivation

One of the most compelling reasons to champion the legalization of marijuana is the fact that closer governmental scrutiny will make its cultivation not just safer for those involved, but also less damaging to the environment.

Illegal indoor cultivation sites release about 3 million cars’ worth of greenhouse gases every year. Legalization wouldn’t solve this problem entirely, but if handled well, it would almost certainly introduce regulations that could lessen the potential environmental impact.

Because let’s face it: as champions of the environment, black market cultivators and dealers have fallen woefully short of the mark.

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

While it’s easy to dismiss some of the above concerns as some far-off country’s problem, other issues persist much closer to home.

Prescription drug use – even the legal variety – can introduce a number of problems right in our own backyards. South Carolina alone fills about 128 million prescriptions every year, and it’s estimated that about 40% of that medication eventually finds its way into public sewage and waste disposal systems.

That might not sound like a big problem - at least until you look at things at the microscopic level. Discarded medications have been found to create antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which has been found to cause something on the order of 65,000 deaths per year.

No Easy Answer

The bottom line here is that the issue of drug use, abuse, and trafficking is one without an obvious solution. The calls for marijuana legalization have (mostly) good intentions, but it’s most certainly not the cure-all to our problems. It's more like a baby step.

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Daniel Faris is a journalist and copywriter from Harrisburg, PA. In his free time he writes about progressive music.