Mandatory Drug Laws Pros And Cons

In the United States during the 1980’s, crime rates were at an all time high. To combat this, many states passed Mandatory Minimum Sentencing laws. These laws have been the object of an astronomical amount of criticism for almost the past three decades. A majority of these laws are unjust, but few can be beneficial to our society. Originally created to be a deterrent against crime, Mandatory Minimum Sentences are now a powerful representative of the United States prejudice justice system. A study conducted by the Connecticut General Assembly investigated Mandatory Minimum Sentences, seeking to find factual evidence to support whether or not they are beneficial to the community. One thing they discover was that the crime does not always

The reason behind this was to try to create a deterrent for the youth of this country to not get involved. A majority of these drug laws are deemed to be harsh and unjust in the eyes of many in the eyes of most, including myself. To get a better understanding on mandatory drug laws and how they tend to disportionately affect minorities, you need to look at the cause and beginning of Nixon’s war on drugs. According to Nixon’s Domestic Policy Chief, the war on drugs was used to cause unrest in minority and anti-war communities. Quoting him from a twenty two year old interview from Harper's Magazine, “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 saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” (CNN, March 24,

A great example of this would be the case of Brock Turner. Brock Turner was a student attending Stanford University, when during his time there he raped an unconscious woman in an alley (The Associated Press, 14th July 2016). Brock Turner only received a six month prison sentence, which many people deemed to be not long enough. A common belief that is held about the trial was that Brock got off easy due to his race and social status. I personally agree that sex crimes such as rape should have a mandatory minimum, so that people such as Brock Turner would have to spend their fair amount of time within our criminal justice system.

In some parts of country, states are attempting to do away with Mandatory Minimum Sentencing laws. Recently the Florida Senate Criminal Justice Committee concluded that money spent on keeping non-violent drug offenders in prison for low crimes is not worth it (The Miami Herald, 21st February 2017). The bill proposed is estimated to save 131 million dollars in taxpayer money, and put less than a thousand people in jail. Florida isn’t the only state to drop mandatory minimums, New York, Delaware, and Michigan have dropped some or all mandatory minimums in the