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End The War On Drugs Essay

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I believe that ending the War on Drugs would result in several crucial benefits to society. The most important of those is that it would help African-Americans withstand oppression by the United States government. If drug abuse was treated as a public health issue rather than a crime, the results would include significant benefits to the black population, a decrease in discriminatory legislation and law enforcement, more welcoming and effective treatment for addicts, the reduction of criminal activity associated with illicit drugs, and a surplus of money and resources for the government to better direct.
While the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties made a great deal of necessary progress in fighting discrimination and racism, the beginning of the 1970s did not mark the end of oppression for …show more content…

One of the best examples of this is the case of crack cocaine. Crack is the most notable scapegoated substance of the drug war. It is composed solely of cocaine and baking soda boiled in water. The crack rocks people smoke generally are seventy-five to ninety percent cocaine. In composition, the two drugs are very similar. (UUL) The most significant difference between the two substances is the federal laws that exist concerning them; it would take about “one hundred times” the amount of pure cocaine to receive the same average prison sentence of a crack offense (UUL). It is difficult to claim that this legislature is blatantly racist, because it applies to all offenders equally. However, in 2003, approximately eighty-one percent of sentenced crack offenders were black people. If the law applied to all people equally, this would mean that in 2003, about eighty-one percent of crack users were black. That is actually far from the truth; a study the same year found that the majority of documented crack users were actually white

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