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Long Term Consequences Of The War On Drugs

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On June 17, 1971, Richard Nixon and the federal government of the United States issued a campaign called the War on Drugs. It was intended as a way to reduce the drug usage in America. Their methods included the “Just Say No” campaign, raids on multiple ghettos and low-income areas, and laws that were made to severely punish drug users. The outcomes of the War on Drugs were a waste of billions of government money, a new opioid epidemic, and massive amounts of Black Americans incarcerated. All in all, it was a total failure, leaving a stain on American history. The irresponsible and downright racist approach to handling drug abuse has affected millions of African Americans. For that reason, the government should take accountability for disproportionally …show more content…

This had damaging consequences, because right after the War on Drugs died down, the Opioid Epidemic started to form. African Americans are put in a bad position. Most of them were not able to afford opioid treatment, and even if they were, the perception of them would prevent them from getting them anyway. This tragically culminated in 2014 through 2017, where the death rates due to synthetic opioids increased by 818% for African Americans (Chau 9). The War on Drug campaign was a cruel chain reaction that led to the deaths of innocent Black lives. Unfortunately, side effects of the War on Drugs do not stop there. The mass arrests of the campaign hindered the growth of Black culture in general. Richard Nixon's excuse to destroy Black homes was to get rid of the drugs that corrupt the poor and the children. Doing SWAT raids on neighborhoods that do not even have the funding to defend themselves was in order to make America a better place. In reality, it made things even worse. When someone goes to jail for a long time, they have no news of the outside world, thus will have no idea how to live their lives when they get

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This then resulted in more African Americans getting arrested for possession of drugs. Once they were arrested the amount of time they would do for the possession was sometimes life sentences. This caused prisons to become over crowded and

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According to the article, The Drug War, Mass Incarceration, and Race “ Black people comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population,10 and are consistently documented by the U.S. government to use drugs at similar rates to people of other races.11 But black people comprise 31 percent of those arrested for drug law violations,12 and nearly 40 percent of those incarcerated”. Despite the fact that colored people are minorities in the country still, make up 1/3 of the people arrested because of the drug policy. The policy effective created to target the minorities by making the cocaine the main focus of the drug. “America of the poor, where, amid hopelessness and lack of education, people will suffer the worst consequences of cocaine”(Kerr, 1) which in many poor communities lived the colored minorities, this made it easier for the police officer to target and arrest the

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One of Nixon’s aide named John Ehrlichman admitted to the real reason why the War on Drugs was introduced, he stated “You want to know what this was really about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m

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To build support for this war Reagan made sure to publicize this all over the media. It was a grand success. Images of “crack dealers” and “crack babies” were seen all over the news. These images of the purposed inner city life of people of color led to the war that is now known as the War on Drugs. In just a mere thirty years the incarceration population increased from 300,000 to 2 million.

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Though the creation of certain policies criminalized drug use and began to target minority communities predominantly African American and Latino. It used a campaign with the message of violence and danger that needed to be controlled within the African American and minority

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Later in the 1980’s, President Reagan revamped this, with it being called Reagan’s Intensified War on Drugs. The issue was that some people believed Reagan had intended certain consequences with this “war” while others disagreed. Things such as police brutality rose and so did arrests on non-violent drug use. That being said, Reagan’s Intensified War on Drugs had more unintended consequences than it did intended ones.

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The Nixon administration declared that drugs were the country's "public enemy. " These illegal drugs were implemented in poor communities where minorities reside, so mass incarceration began. Throughout the 70s and 80s, the government spent millions to crack down on drug dealers and those doing drugs. This led to many Americans being imprisoned for simply possessing a drug, specifically marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. The majority of those Americans were minority men, which caused many of their families to be torn apart.

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One of the most detrimental things that happen to the black community was the declared “war on drugs” which lead to mass incarceration. The war on drugs was a direct target on minorities. It was a failed attempt to eradicate the drug problem in the United States. African-Americans did not see policy changes on drugs until

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In 1968 drugs became a top political issue for President Richard Nixon. President Richard Nixon declared a total war on drugs, which led to new drug policies, high incarceration rates for drug related crime, high populations in prisons and large budgets to fund the war on drugs, and prisons. Although the war on drugs may have been seen as a good idea at the time, this approach does not look to have had the impact or outcome desired in the control of drugs, as 40 years later and billions spent on

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According to Western & Becky Pettit (2010), African Americans have always been incarcerated at a higher rate than whites. Laws were enacted from 1914 (The Harrison Act) that restricted the sale of heroin and cocaine, which were both legal and established the legal framework for intervention on drug policy. However; during the 1980’s and 90’s marked an unprecedented escalation

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Presidents began running under the premise of “tough on crime” to assure American citizens that they would keep them safe from harm and danger. One of the main key points of this was drug use. Presidents, such as Nixon, would began to vilify and criminalize drug users in a way America had never

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First off, the war on drugs quickly increased the rate of incarcerations but in a very racially biased way. Although whites were more likely to deliver an array of different drugs, blacks were more likely

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Like it is mentioned in the movie 13th “The so called war on drugs was a war on communities of color”. So, now black people are being arrested much more than White people even though the drug use is close to the same as Angela F. Chan points out in her article for the Huffington Post. “Even though Black people use drugs at the same rate as White people, they are incarcerated for drug crimes at 20 to 50 times the rate of White people in some states”. A law that was passed during the war on drugs was mandatory sentencing.

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Some may not be too familiar with the war on drugs and the effects it has had on the society we live in. The war on drugs was started by the Nixon administration in the early seventies. Nixon deemed drug abuse “public enemy number one”. This was the commencement of the war on drugs, this war has lasted to this day and has been a failure. On average 26 million people use opioids.

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The War on Drugs that the government has been fighting for almost two centuries has been a failure. The War on Drugs has made criminal organizations, violence around the world, and drugs themselves worse. The War on Drugs has negatively affected the lives of millions of people around the world as it has led to massive incarceration in the United States; corruption, political destabilization, and violence in Latin America, Asia, and Africa; to systemic human rights abuses across the world. Prohibition of certain drugs has actually led to higher rate of violence and murders all around the world. Which drugs are legal and illegal is not really based on any specific scientific assessment of the relative risk of the drugs, but it has everything

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