In his article, “Toward a Policy on Drugs,” Elliot Currie discusses “the magnitude and severity of our drug crisis” (para. 21), and how “no other country has anything resembling the American drug problem” (para. 21). The best way to describe America’s drug problem is that it is a hole continuously digs itself deeper. America’s drug issues were likely comparable to other country’s at one point in time, but today it can be blamed on the “street cultures” (para. 21) that continue to use and spread the use of illegal drugs. These street cultures transcend the common stereotype of drug users, such as low income communities in cities or welfare recipients, and can be found in every economic class and location. They are groups of people who have
This situation creates a cyclical behavior where the people who we normally consider to be the bread-winners are not capable of providing help to their families, which in turn pushes on this role to the younger generation, increasing the proliferation of the drug trade among the young people in
In 1950, following the tragic years of the World War II when President Harry S. Truman was still in office, United States got involved in the Korean War siding with South Korea. The United States helped the South Koreans fight the Communist North Koreans with their allies including of China and the Soviet Union. General Douglas MacArthur was fired by President Truman, and in the end, North and South Korea signed a truce resulting in no specific winner. Eventually President Eisenhower was elected, and the United States engaged itself in a Cold War with the Soviet Union.
To understand the War on Drugs one needs to understand the cultural landscape that made the war on drugs advantageous. Ronald
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.
In this essay, I will discuss the purpose of the War on Drugs. Note, that my knowledge and credibility will come from The New Jim Crow, written by Michelle Alexander. First, I will define exactly the reason why we created the War on Drugs. Next, we will look at the effects that War on Drugs created. Thirdly, we’ll discuss some of the excuses that law enforcement officers did and still do, to “crack down” drugs.
The 1990’s marked the beginning of a new war on drugs. Drug abuse rates had started to increase, wider variety of drugs became more common, and more people started to use. Not a lot has changed, because drug abuse is still very common in today’s society. In the 1990s, drug usage was bad, however a lot of the drugs in today 's society were not as common. Drug abuse is not just in the big cities,the problem is all over.
Their Escape from the War The Vietnam War was a difficult time for soldiers and the people on the home front. The soldiers were experiencing a completely different type of war, guerilla warfare. It was complete chaos and there were no organized battles or anyway to get a good attack on the Vietnamese soldiers, or the Vietcong as they were called. The soldiers were having to do unethical things and go against their will by killing these people.
According to Brianna Lee in Mexico’s Drug War, “more than 90 percent of cocaine now travels through Mexico into the United States, up from 77 percent in 2003.” Therefore, drug trafficking is at a higher Smith 2 rate than it was 12 years ago with just one illegal drug. With other illegal drugs that are trafficking added to this list the percentage would grow and the demand of illegal drugs will rise. We have to also keep in mind that this drug trafficking alone is only into the United States, imagine how high the demand of illegal drugs is in other countries coming from Mexico. The war on drugs has failed for many years, and is the reason drug trafficking is still highly rising.
The supply of drugs would dry up quickly, however, if there were not an incessant, powerful demand for them in this country. America has an estimated $80 billion a year habit in illegal drugs, and the legal attacks on one kind of drugs (heroin in the 1950s, psychedelic substances and marijuana in the 1960s), only made consumers to turn to other substances (cocaine and its refined crystal "crack" in the 1970s and 1980s). The demand for illegal drugs is so great that removal of the source of supply in, say, Latin America, would only cause production to begin somewhere else. This is precisely what happened with opium and heroin, when production moved from Turkey to Southeast Asia and then to Mexico between 1950 and 1975, and with marijuana, which came largely from Mexico until the 1960s, but which is now produced domestically on a large scale. The lesson is obvious: "The problem really lies not with the drug-producing countries but with consuming countries like the U.S., which provide an avid market for their output."
The purpose of this research is to draw a connection between a history of gang violence in Central America and drug trafficking in Mexico and Central American and Mexican migration patterns to the U.S. Beyond that, this paper highlights U.S. involvement in the increase of gang violence specifically in Honduras and El Salvador, and how the U.S. demand for narcotics has fueled the Drug War throughout Latin America but mostly in Mexico. This paper also shows how U.S. policies on the legalization of certain drugs and criminal justice reforms can decrease illegal immigration and improve the lives of people seeking to migrate north. Introduction As large numbers of Central American and Mexican migrants continue to cross the United States’ southern border, many
Lives are dramatically impacted by this issue. Addiction to any substance is very powerful, with many ending up jobless, homeless, or in debt to pursue their addiction. Stronger addiction has the power to do this as the substance is of higher necessity than basic survival, such as food and shelter. It is extremely easy to gain access to drugs, with many prescription drugs often being sold for profit. The manufacturing of illegal drugs has also grown in recent decades.
The main issue when it comes to drugs in the United States is the inefficient policies and sentencing laws that have been created. Also, the injustices within these policies pertaining primarily to race. Once the “war on drugs” was claimed the only way the government and law enforcement saw fit to handling this skyrocketing issue was to incarcerate offenders. Although this solution worked for a while, other alternatives needed to be made. However, these alternatives were not made and this left the drug policies, sentencing laws, and injustices at a standstill.
For example, agencies have been established with the sole intent to manage drug use and distribution and technology has been exclusively developed to detect the presence of drugs. Yet, evidence has indicated that such exhaustive efforts have been relatively unsuccessful. First, it has been assumed that drugs have perpetuated violence in society and based on this rationale, it was believed that by the suppressing the pervasiveness of drugs that incidents of violence would simultaneously diminish. However, reality has failed to align with the expectations that had initially been anticipated. Research findings have suggested that the decriminalization of drugs would result in a less adversarial drug market in which conflicts have tended to arise among dealers as well as between dealers and buyers (Common Sense for Drug Policy, 2007, p. 21).
The U.S. leads all nations in opioid usage. Another 8 million use cocaine in the U.S. this number is 3rd overall across all nations. These statistics have lead me and many others to believe the war on drugs is anything besides a success. Opposing views claim, that the war on drugs has been rather successful.