There are very few people who can honestly claim that current drug policies have been a success. Aside from being ineffective the costly current drug policy of prohibition has created a set of unwanted consequences including; a high prison population of non-violent offenders, corruption, violence, and whole set of health issues. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” and despite the failures of the current policy in deterring drug use that is just what the government is choosing to do. Perhaps it’s time to consider a different approach to the drug issue. An approach which will address drug use in an innovative way while solving the problems which prohibition has created and also bring about societal, health, and economic benefits but most importantly it will also give back the individual liberties which prohibition has managed to erode. It’s time to consider the legalization of drugs.
Drug prohibition has proven a very costly war. And the cost has not only been monetary, drug prohibition has lead to corruption, increase violence, increase inmate population, and it has also infringed upon our civil liberties. Currently the government spends $47.8 billion a year on prohibition enforcement, according to a 2010 Department of Economics, Harvard University report by Jeffrey A. Miron. Yet despite the exorbitant amount of money being spent fighting this “war on drugs”, drugs are still prevalent on our streets. According to an article published on CBS News website in 2008 by Jennifer Warner, the US leads the world in illegal drug use with a whopping 42.4% of Americans admitting to having tried illegal drugs at least once. In 2009 a the federal Substance Abuse ...
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In Douglas N. Husak’s A Moral Right to Use Drugs he attempts to look at drug use from an impartial standpoint in order to determine what is the best legal status for currently illegal drugs. Husak first describes the current legal situation concerning drugs in America, citing figures that show how drug crimes now make up a large percentage of crimes in our country. Husak explains the disruption which this causes within the judicial system and it is made clear that he is not content with the current way drugs are treated. The figures that Husak offers up, such as the fact that up to one third of all felony charges involve drugs, are startling, but more evidence is needed than the fact that a law is frequently broken to justify it’s repeal.
A typical contention about either decriminalization or legitimization is that if drugs are authorized, misconduct will be affected generously. In his article, Toward a Policy on Drugs, Elliot Currie demonstrates that there are solid connections between of crime and drug dependence. As Currie focuses out, crime rate is influenced essentially by utilizing drugs. Both drug pharmacists and
New York: New York, 2010. Print. The. Should the U.S. Continue Its War on Drugs? Opposing Views: Issues, Experts, Answers.
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 the removal of non-violent citizens from society- either directly by incarceration or indirectly by death - which is genocidal in quantity and essence. I base my support of the decriminalization of all drugs on a principle of human rights, but the horror and frustration with which I voice this support is based on practicality. The most tangible effect of the unfortunately labeled "Drug War" in the United States is a prison population larger than Russia's and China's, and an inestimable death toll that rivals the number of American casualties from any given war, disease or catastrophe.
Mass Incarceration: The New Jim Crow is the direct consequence of the War on Drugs. That aims to reduce, prevent and eradicate drug use in America through punitive means. The effect of the war on drug policies returned de jure discrimination, denied African Americans justice and undermined the rule of law by altering the criminal justice system in ways that deprive African Americans civil rights and citizenship. In the “New Jim Crow” Alexandra argues that the effects of the drug war policies are not unattended consequences but coordinated by designed to deny African Americans opportunity to gain wealth, be excluded from gaining employment and exercise civil rights through mass incarceration and felony conviction. The war on drugs not only changes the structure of the criminal justice system, it also changes the ways that police officers, prosecutors and judges do their jobs.
The War on Drugs is believed to help with many problems in today’s society such as realizing the rise of crime rates and the uprooting of violent offenders and drug kingpin. Michelle Alexander explains that the War on Drugs is a new way to control society much like how Jim Crow did after the Civil War. There are many misconceptions about the War on Drugs; commonly people believe that it’s helping society with getting rid of those who are dangerous to the general public. The War on Drugs is similar to Jim Crow by hiding the real intention behind Mass Incarceration of people of color. The War on Drugs is used to take away rights of those who get incarcerated. When they plead guilty, they will lose their right to vote and have to check application
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
Many feel today we are loosing the war on drugs. People consider legalization unnecessary. They feel that it will increase the amount of drug use throughout the world. They state that in many cases, drug users who have quit quit because of trouble with the law. Legalization would eliminate the legal forces that discourage the users from using or selling drugs. They also say that by making drugs legal, the people who have never tried drugs for fear of getting caught by the law will have no reason to be afraid anymore and will become users (Potter 1998).
With the opinion of the American people becoming more allowing of low-level drug use, and the successful monetary generation in states like Colorado, we are now seeing viable alternatives to spending billions of dollars in failed efforts to restrict drug use, unfair imprisonment of minorities, and a dependence of drug users on violent cartels. The opinions of society is ever-changing, and this will certainly have an effect on our drug laws an policies. It is apparent that the negative stigma surrounding recreational drug use -at least with marijuana- is slowly diminishing.
This supports the conservative’s claim that the war on drugs is not making any progress to stop the supply of drugs coming into America. Conservative writer for the magazine National Review, William Buckley, shows his outrage towards the Council on Crime in America for their lack of motivation to change the drug policies that are ineffective. Buckley asks, “If 1.35 million drug users were arrested in 1994, how many drug users were not arrested? The Council informs us that there are more than 4 million casual users of cocaine” (70). Buckley goes on to discuss in the article, “Misfire on Drug Policy,” how the laws set up by the Council were meant to decrease the number of drug users, not increase the number of violators.
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
One of the most prevalent misconceptions, Benson and Rasmussen, contend is the notion that a large percentage of drug users commit nondrug crimes, what might be called the “drugs-cause-crime” assumption implicit in the government’s drug-war strategy. If true, then an effective crackdown on ...
America is wasting it’s money and resources. It’s trying restrict something on which restrictions don’t have any effects: drugs. People who don’t use recreational drugs don’t do so because of the health risks; people who do use drugs would whether or not they are legal. The fact that they are illegal makes little difference. Nevertheless, $15,000,000,000 goes directly into drug prohibition every year, and has very little effect. Very much money is spent to pay police narcotics officers, fund the D.E.A., and house drug-offenders in prison. The prisons are full of drug-related criminals, and violent offenders go free earlier because of this. Which would you prefer walking the streets, a rapist, or a potsmoker?
stigation, Uniform Crime Reports for the United States 1996, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office ( 1997) Inciardi, James A. "The Wars on Drugs." Palo Alto: Mayfield, 1986 Kennedy, X.J., Dorthy M. Kennedy, and Jane E. Aaron, eds. The Bedford Reader.