National Drug Control Strategy Analysis

There is most likely no doubt in anyone’s mind that America has a drug problem. However, there is not just one thing that makes drugs in America a problem. The problem has many different things involved, and is a very complicated problem. Doing drugs is a problem for the person taking them, the family, and the community. These include health issues for the person and family taking drugs to deal with. The community not only has to deal with many of these same issues involving the drug taker, but it also has to deal with drug takers driving on the streets, working at places we go to, and teaching our children at schools, recreation centers, or day care. The education, prevention, and treatment of taking drugs are problems that take time

One of the first and most widely known attempts to solve the drug problem is the “War on Drugs.” This was started under President Nixon in 1973 and has cost billions of dollars over the years. Further, the “war” has gone from a war on drugs to a war on those taking the drugs (Hart, C. L., Ray, O., & Ksir, C., 2015). In reading the National Drug Control Strategy, one can conclude that a more effective strategy in fixing the drug problem in the United States would be to focus more on helping drug users not take drugs in the first place. However, if people do take drugs, there must be strategies to help them deal with their drug issues and maybe even quit taking drugs. This would be a “prevention” strategy. According to Hart, Ray, and Ksir, there are three things involved with a prevention strategy: Supply reduction, demand reduction, and harm reduction. Supply reduction is very important in the three reductions. This would include anything from passing laws to make it difficult to get drugs, getting penalized for taking drugs, and stopping the production of or rounding up the drugs any way possible to get rid of the drugs (www.ncjrs.gov). This can be an effective part of dealing with the drug problem in America. On the www.drugpolicy.org website, it states that the supply and demand way of thinking does not work with the war on drugs. They are more about dealing with the demand and harm