“High Price” Is The War On Drugs Helping or Hindering? By Rachel Q. Taylor Kaplan University Though President Nixon launched “The War on Drugs” in 1971, the most aggressive antidrug policies, including harsh mandatory prison sentences for possession of even small amounts of narcotics, were enacted during the Reagan administration. Thirty years later, 20 million Americans (roughly 1 in 15) use illegal drugs regularly. We seem to be losing the war. Some, including Columbia University neuroscientist Carl Hart, think we were fighting the wrong war to begin with. In “High Price,” Hart argues that drugs are less a cause than a symptom of a broken society. It’s the causes of despair, Hart believes, not the drugs, on which we should …show more content…
They housed the first group in stark cages, one rat to a cage. They placed the second group in an “enriched environment,” which offered opportunities to burrow, play, and copulate. The isolated rats drank 20 times more morphine-laced sugar water than those enjoying the Rat Park. These results have been reproduced using both cocaine and amphetamine. Hart has shown that humans also respond to what behavioral scientists call “alternative reinforcers,” challenging the conviction that these drugs are irresistible. He found that habitual users of crack cocaine will often choose a cash prize of as little as $5 over a hit of crack. When he offered methamphetamine addicts $5 or a large dose of meth, about half chose the cash. When he offered $20, nearly all did. Hart uses crack cocaine and methamphetamine as examples of how “emotional hysteria that stems from misinformation related to illegal drugs obfuscates the real problems faced by marginalized people.” Despite little hard evidence that smokable cocaine is more addictive or more likely to make people violent than powder cocaine, the legal penalties for possession of crack are far stiffer than for powder cocaine. Hart points out the similarities between cocaine …show more content…
Much of his concern was about how drug laws appear to be used as a method of discriminating against groups we don’t like. He uses the crack epidemic as one example – despite more crack users being white, over 80 percent of those arrested with it are black. (https://www.aclu.org/billions-dollars-wasted-racially-biased-arrests) He also points to the methamphetamine abuse today and its association with both gay people and poor whites. “We can’t say that we don’t like poor, white people. But we can say that we don’t like some behavior that’s primarily associated with them, even though they don’t make up the majority of the users,” he says. “Their drug use is causing the problem, so we’re going after their drug use. But really, we’re going after them.”, If the U.S government is genuinely committed to safeguarding the safety, health, and human rights of their citizens, then they need to adopt new
In the book High Price, highly credible author and neuroscientist, Dr. Carl Hart explains the misconceptions that everyone normally has about drugs and their users. He uses his own life experiences coming from a troubled neighborhood in Florida. The book consists of Hart’s life growing up with domestic violence in his household and the chance he had to come out and excel academically. He talks about the war on drugs and how within this war on drugs we were actually fighting the war with the wrong thing.
“The root cause is a vast, multi-layered incommensurability between the institutions of globalized, market driven society and the basic psychological, social and spiritual needs of human beings” (229). Something that is only briefly recognised in public discussion. The normal methods of intervention are enormously expensive with minimal effects. “Illegal drug business and legal pharmaceutical industries” (229) are financially benefiting from the damaging drugs people use. During a time that is almost complete “domination of Canadian thought by the logic of globalization, it is difficult” (229) to even to come up with a good way of improving dislocation. Dodging these tough realities has created a deadlock and caused us to infinitely endure feeble interventions and ridiculous “war on drugs”
Throughout “Chasing the Scream” many intriguing stories are told from individuals involved in the drug war, those on the outside of the drug war, and stories about those who got abused by the drug war. Addiction has many social causes that address drug use and the different effects that it has on different people. In our previous history we would see a tremendous amount of individuals able to work and live satisfying lives after consuming a drug. After the Harrison Act, drugs were abolished all at once, but it lead to human desperation so instead of improving our society, we are often the reason to the problem. We constantly look at addicts as the bad guys when other individuals are often the reasons and influences to someone’s decision in
Husak admits that there are gray areas between this recreational approach and the universally reviled drug abuse. However, Husak is right in saying that drug use that occurs in the ghetto is not recreational, and goes on to explain that rich white people are even more likely to use certain drugs, notably ... ... middle of paper ... ... enough time explaining the benefits of legalization. I agree with his assertion that the burden of proof should lie on the heads of those limiting our freedoms and therefore I personally am not bothered by his attack strategy, but in the grand scheme of trying to further his cause Husak would be served well by discussing the issue in terms of why legalization would help our society.
This quote shows what a study found in Seattle, that the population in Seattle is seventy percent but most of the people in jail are blacks. Seattle has a problem where cocaine and crack are the main drugs being abused and sold, but the people who sell it the most are whites, but the majority who end up in jail for cocaine or crack charges are African Americans. Well this happens because black people do drugs but also white people, but the ones who are the victims of incarceration are blacks, this mainly due to the way the law enforcements act towards the poor colored communities. The issue arose from people that are non white abusing certain drugs, the drugs got outlawed every time a certain race abused it.
The reason with the old ways do not work, Alexander say, is because “self-destructive drug users are responding in a tragic, but understandable way” (226). It is not their drug- problem that caused the dislocation, but the dislocation that cause the drug problem. He uses the term dislocation to describe the lack of integration with “family, community, society and spiritual values” (226). Alexander goes on to explain that history proves that inability to achieve health opportunities can take on the form of violence, and damaging drug use. Therefore, the “drug problem” (226) is not the problem. The problem is more the “pattern of response to prolong dislocation” (226). Alexander supports this by explaining the reason for the dislocation as being globalized by a society that is market driven which can only be established by the displacement of tradition, economy, and relationships. This has been seen in history before in England during the 19TH century, when “a brutal, export-oriented manufacturing system” was accompanied by work...
Hari’s inconsistent biased information neglects the possibility of the negative outcome if governments around the world decide to decriminalize all of the make major contraband drugs. Study after study that Hari has done has shown, is that incarcerating addicts does not rehabilitate them but instead increases the risk in making in repeating the same mistake again, and criminalizing drugs does not make these substances disappear, instead, it makes them more dangerous. Hari exaggerates more on the information that he has researched in the text instead of explaining the importance of what he has shared to the readers. He explains how and why addicts become addicted to their substances is that of the lack of “bonding” that he or she in their environment. Hari argues that this is why some people can use drugs and alcohol and not become addicted while others cannot. To the people who have a connection to their environment don’t become addicts. Those who don’t have that connection to their environment is part of the small percentage of the population that is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Hari does not provide the science within the text that examines the whole meaning of addiction. In a blog post written by Dr.Derek Simon, a neuroscientist and graduate from University of Michigan with a PhD, who is studying neurobiological basis for drug addiction at Rockefeller University, writes that “Hari’s argument makes no mention of the
When societies finally become comfortable with reality, they begin to abandon the murderous laws that impede their growth. Currently, the social stigma and legislated morality regarding the use of illicit drugs yield perhaps the most destructive effects on American society. Drug laws have led to a removal of non-violent citizens from society- either directly by incarceration or indirectly by death - that is genocidal in quantity and essence.
As described in novel The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference the course of any trend, movement, social behavior, and even the spread of a virus has a general trend line that in essence resemble a parabola with 3 main critical points. Any trend line first starts from zero, grows until it crosses the first tipping point, and then spreads like wildfire. Afterwards, the trend skyrockets to its carrying capacity (Galdwell, 2000). Then the trend gradually declines before it reaches the next tipping and suddenly falls out of favor and out of memory. Gladwell defines tipping points as the “magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire” (Gladwell, 2000).
“The fact that war is the word we use for almost everything—on terrorism, drugs, even poverty—has certainly helped to desensitize us to its invocation; if we wage wars on everything, how bad can they be?”- Glenn Greenwald. The use of drugs through out the United States has gotten worse and worse every year, and I know that in the U.S. it is both a health problem and a crime problem. But I feel like that we should treat the abuse of illegal drugs as a matter of public health. It should be treated as a matter of public health over a matter of criminal justice because we can help people that abuse drugs and are addicted. Also well be able to get their lives on track so they won’t have to use drugs again which makes dealers go away because no one is buying their drugs anymore.” The origins and nature of the appeal of anti drug claims must be confronted if we are ever to understand how “drug problems” are constructed in the U.S.”(pg.92) –The Social Construction of Drug Scares
A “drug-free society” has never existed, and probably will never exist, regardless of the many drug laws in place. Over the past 100 years, the government has made numerous efforts to control access to certain drugs that are too dangerous or too likely to produce dependence. Many refer to the development of drug laws as a “war on drugs,” because of the vast growth of expenditures and wide range of drugs now controlled. The concept of a “war on drugs” reflects the perspective that some drugs are evil and war must be conducted against the substances
Dr. Carl Hart had a very rocky childhood and through his own determination to not repeat the past has gotten to where he is now in life. He comes from a broken family plagued by domestic violence, divorce, and a lack of support while he was growing up. Dr. Hart’s views on; social support, addiction and the physiological effects on the brain, factors to take into account when assessing drug abusers, drug policies influencing discrimination, and decriminalizing drug use are well articulated through his book High Life; in which enabled the audience to have raw reactions to his personal views.
Shannon, Elaine. “The War on Drugs: A Losing Battle.” Time.com. Time Magazine, 3 Dec. 2010. Web. 18 Dec. 2011. .
Wolf, M. (2011, June 4). We should declare an end to our disastrous war on drugs. Financial Times. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy.consortiumlibrary.org/docview/870200965?accountid=14473
In the early 1980s, policymakers and law enforcement officials stepped up efforts to combat the trafficking and use of illicit drugs. This was the popular “war on drugs,” hailed by conservatives and liberals alike as a means to restore order and hope to communities and families plagued by anti-social or self-destructive pathologies. By reducing illicit drug use, many claimed, the drug war would significantly reduce the rate of serious nondrug crimes - robbery, assault, rape, homicide and the like. Has the drug war succeeded in doing so?