Argumentative Essay On Drug Trafficking

As American citizens, we do not realize how much partisanship affects our lives every day. Political parties were completely unanticipated by the framers of the United States Constitution yet, we have been allowing them to guide our voting decisions for decades. Not only do these labels essentially predetermine our preferred candidate, but our stances on controversial issues as well, which we will expect our preferred candidate to have the same view on. One controversial issue that has been approached by many presidents in many different ways over the last fifty years is our nation’s drug laws. This began in 1971 when President Nixon officially declared the war on drugs. Following this, both Republican and Democratic presidents adopted policies

In other words, someone caught with 10 grams of crack cocaine would be warranted the same mandatory sentence as someone caught with 1,000 grams of powder cocaine. The reasoning for this disparity was to target international drug trafficking, to attack the problem at its source, the logic being that if drug dealers are behind bars, users will have no supply, solving the problem. However, upon analyzing the effects of this law, it will be shown that it affected mainly recreational users, as opposed to major dealers. This law also allocated money for drug abuse education and prevention programs to expand on rehabilitation of offenders, yet with the sentencing disparity created, this law would later be considered an immense

According to Steven E. Barkan, PhD, in his novel on sociology and get tough on crime policies, “Today more than 2.3 million Americans are incarcerated in jail or prison at any one time, compared to only about one-fourth that number 30 years ago (Warren, 2009). This increase in incarceration has cost the nation hundreds of billions of dollars since then.” We have nearly quadrupled the number of individuals incarcerated, which has resulted in an immense national cost. Regarding mandatory minimums, according to the RAND Corporation, “Mandatory minimum sentences are not justifiable on the basis of cost-effectiveness at reducing cocaine consumption or drug-related crime. A principal reason for these findings is the high cost of incarceration.” It costs thousands of dollars to house inmates, money we could be putting toward other areas such as education or rehabilitative programs. An additional effect of Reagan’s law was severely limiting judicial discretion. Bruce Gross with the American College of Forensic Examiners, regarding courtrooms in the 1980s stated, “At the time, judges essentially had full discretion and, as such, some degree of variation between sentences across judges and jurisdiction was to be expected.” Judges were able to deem outcomes on a case by case basis, which is important to a rational and coherent system of justice. Yet with the creation of mandatory sentences, judges were required to hand out certain