Drugs have been around this earth for many years. Production, disruptions, and consumption have gone hand and hand together. Due to the high rise of consumers causing death, addiction, and drug-related crimes led to this "War on Drugs" to be declared by President Nixon in 1971. The war on drugs was a government tactic to decrease drug abuse and drug-related crimes, yet led to severely punishable sentencing if convicted of possession, selling, trafficking, or disrupting. This led to the convictions of any drug-related crime increasing tremendously not only in color communities but anyone. When President Ronald Regan became president the plenties became way more severe and targeted towards certain racial/ethnic groups. This critical analysis …show more content…
Federal laws and policies that prohibit or restrict the production, sales, and use of drugs have been heavily implemented through the years, yet the rate of drugs and convictions on just possession, smuggling, trafficking, etc, have rise throughout the years. After 1980, Congress passed mandatory minimum and maximum sentencing laws or requirements for these drug imprisonment convictions. The United States government has profited from this war on drugs because certain changes in state and federal laws to campaigns that support them go against the ones who profit from this. Corruption within law enforcement, government, and the system has imprisoned the ongoing war among the citizens. According to Robert Higgs in the section of Etceteras stated that"...despite the desires of many millions of consumers to acquire the products regularly, and of millions of others to acquire them occasionally, the governments of the United States seem hellbent to continue law enforcement that results in the imprisonment of ever larger numbers of these consumers and the businessmen who cater to their demands." (Higg, R. 1999, p. 313). The real benefactors of this war on drugs would have to be the United States government and anyone with any sort of authority or power because they are the ones who are producing, trafficking, and consuming. It is …show more content…
The article Investigating the Assignment of Probation Conditions: Heterogeneity and the Role of Race and Ethnicity, says that "...black and Hispanic offenders are less likely to receive structured alternative sanctions…drug crimes have become representative of a "moral panic" attribute to the threat of violence and danger from minority groups, and that racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing may be greater in drug offenses." (Kimchi, A. 2018. p.718). The social inequality of representation, sentencing, and alternative sanctions become clear that people of color don't have those privileges or have different rehabilitation or sanctions. The Youtube video "War on Drugs, by Jay Z". demonstrated that the defunding in schools and the economic stress caused people to turn to other ways to make ends meet. People ignore statistics on this issue society has made it a "black issue", so people of color are seen as villains or evil. Former felons or even former convicts can't get certain jobs due to it being on their criminal records which their employers can view. Certain communities, schools, and minorities would be raided for possession of drugs due to the laws upon ending the war on drugs yet the system has failed because of many