President Richard Nixon And The War On Drugs
They wanted to see it come to an end because they saw it a great public enemy. The United States president Richard Nixon in 1971 declared drug abuse a number one public enemy during his message to the Congress on dug abuse control and
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.
President Richard Nixon invaded Cambodia after saying he would bring peace to southeast Asia. He went back on his word when he decided to do just that. He said in his speech that he wanted to drive out the Vietnamese forces and destroy their supplies in hopes of stopping the war from expanding. He also said that this is the future of 18 million in south vietnam and 7 million in cambodia.
In this documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom. One issue that was discussed in this video was a “war on drugs.” War on drugs was a war on color declared by President Nixon. The drug war produced unequal outcomes across racial groups, exhibited through racial discrimination by law enforcement and disproportionate drug war misery suffered by communities of color. I thought the issue that was discussed to be quite interesting because a lot has not changed.
The steep increase in incarceration rates during these years coincides with the Reagan administration’s enhancement of Nixon’s War on Drugs through the Anti- Drug Abuse Act of 1986. One key part of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act is the mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drugs offenses including discrepancies in sentencing between cocaine and crack cocaine. The version of the Anti Drug Abuse Act passed in 1988 provided monetary incentives for police agencies to implement the war on drugs through the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program (Byrne Program). These Byrne Program grants, along with civil forfeiture laws passed in 1984 that allowed police agencies to share in drug related assets, provided substantial resources and motivation for state and local law enforcement to focus on the drug
Bachman and Kenneth E. Sharpe thoroughly analyze the possible ripple effects that could potentially come from the War on Drugs. Written in 1990, they had not yet seen the full effect of the War on Drugs, as it was still relatively new. However, because there were so many indicators of what may come, their predictions remained valid. Bachman and Sharpe portrayed the War on Drugs as threat to American people and fundamentals, for it would only do more harm than good and violate many aspects of the constitution. In their examination of the War on Drugs, they had different sections of points that the reader could differentiate between, filling their paragraphs with plenty of facts, statistics and quotes.
Furthermore, several acts were enacted to regulate the use of specific drugs as well as the federal prohibition of alcohol. But in 1933, Prohibition ended, making it legal to consume alcohol again. In the 1970’s, drugs were categorized based on their “potential for abuse” (Levinthal, 2016). Unfortunately, many of the illicit drugs are manufactured outside of the United States.
The use of narcotics like cocaine, claimed many lives and earned widespread coverage by media and news. Following this Nancy Reagan began the “War on Drugs”, a campaign to combat pre-existing drug usage and prevent future
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
Almost everyone knows someone who has been
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
Essentially, the war on drugs has demonstrated to be an exorbitant expense. The federal government in 2002 alone spent $18.822 billion in the form of expenditures such as treatment, prevention, and domestic law enforcement (CSDP, 2007, p. 54). However, given that the drug war has garnered meager results, this investment may be interpreted as a waste of taxpayer dollars. Alternatively, the money that has been allocated to arrest and detain drug offenders may also be a source of contention. CSDP (2007) “Of the 1,846,351 arrests for drug law violations in 2005, 81.7% (1,508,469) were for possession of a controlled substance.
My home state of Minnesota is currently dealing with what Richard Nixon states was “public enemy number one”, and this is a drug crisis, in particular an opioid crisis that has taken the lives of 395 Minnesotans just in 2016. What is the current government doing to help solve this problem? They declared it a national public health crisis but other than that they have pushed for stricter drug control like Nixon did back during his presidency. Nixon started the war on drugs to help him win his presidential campaign and it has been something that has had negative effects to Americans ever since. The War On Drugs has been a failure to the American people through its adverse effect on African American communities, its establishment of unjust mandatory
Since President Nixon began his war on drugs in 1971, there have been 45 million arrests and have spent billions of dollars in the fight against public enemy number one in the United States: consumption and drug trafficking. However, drugs are becoming cheaper and pure and access to them ever easier. Under President Nixon emphasized treating addicts, but, over the years, the focus has been on criminalizing consumers, and created a system that measures the police efficiency, rewards and amounts depending on the number of arrests. The documentary "The House I Live I" is an accurate portrait of the American judicial system intricate in its relentless fight against drug trafficking, which has resulted in violations of human rights and individual
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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