Satire Essay On War On Drugs

War on Drugs President Nixon declared “War on Drugs” in 1971. Since that moment it has been a back and forth battle as to whether or not drugs should be decriminalized. Because of this the number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997. Some argue that there is not enough being done, while others think to much is being done and that we as nation need to change the way we combat this ever growing issue. As of today the drug industry is a multi-billion dollar operation. Around $130 billion dollars are made yearly off the sale of cocaine alone. It is a huge money making operation and that makes it just that much harder to stop, especially the way our government is tackling the issues right now.

It is one of the only products like that in existence. When the war on drugs started, the government targeted the “big” drug making groups. They put limits and the need for permits on many chemicals this started to work at first but the problem was they were decreasing the supply but they were not fixing the need or demand for the product. So unregulated backyard operations started popping up all over the United States. This caused a spike in unsafe drugs entering the market. When the government realized this they made even more regulations on the chemicals sold thinking this would stop the problem, they were very wrong. All this did was push the production of drugs outside the United States to places like Mexico. What the government should have learned form this is that you cant fix the problem until you start correcting the way the drug users are being handled, they need rehabilitation and help not a jail sentence that makes it even harder to get back into the world and hold a job, rehab instead of jail