America’s modern “war on drugs” was officially kicked off in 1971 during a press conference with president Nixon. Among other things, Nixon declared drugs to be America’s number one enemy and the phrase the “war on drugs” was born. The size and presence of federal drug control agencies dramatically increased during Nixon’s presidency. It would also prove to be the only time in our country’s history of fighting drug use that the bulk of the federal funding for this initiative was spent on demand reduction and treatment-based approaches rather than on punitive and supply control methods (Thirty). Both prior to and since this period, America’s drug policies have always taken a decidedly different course. In recent years such policies have come …show more content…
It was also around this time that the first U.S. drug laws started to appear. In 1875, the anti-opium law of San Francisco was passed and it was aimed squarely at the Chinese immigrants who had settled in the area (Gieringer). Following the premise of San Francisco’s anti-opium law, the anti cocaine laws of the South were created in the first decade of the 20th century. These laws were also racially based. On February 11th, 1914 the NY Times published an article titled “Negro Cocaine “Fiends” Are The New Southern Menace”. In it they reported that that black men were being becoming crazed and committing murders due to “sniffing” as well as allegations of rapes and that black men were becoming impervious to bullets (Williams). Similar things were happening in the mid west as well. As Mexican immigrants fled the hardships of the Mexican revolution and cross into the United States, fears of job competition created tensions with the white population and Mexican’s were blamed for the influx of marijuana use. Although drugs were used in equal measures and often more so by whites (Knafo), it is obvious to see prohibitive measures being developed not based on evidence of harm but on racial …show more content…
The media’s portrayal of the crack epidemic caused a nationwide panic and the no tolerance policy proposed by the Reagan administration was enthusiastically embraced. The politicians took note of the county’s new opinion on drug use and in 1986, the Anti- Drug Abuse Act was passed and with it mandatory minimum sentences were reinstated. First time offenders caught with possession of 5 grams of crack received 5 years of prison time with no possibility of parole. This created a sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine from 100:1 down to 18:1 and unfairly targeted African Americans (Brown). The Act took discretion out of the hands of the judicial system and subsequently incarceration rates quadrupled (NAACP CRIMINAL JUSTICE FACTS). Today 50% of the federal prison population has convictions for drug charges (Becker). Massive amounts of resources have been used in the twenty years of supply reduction measures in Columbia, yet they have done little to stop their production of drugs. As of 2014 they continue to be the top producer of cocaine consumed in the United States (McDermont). Despite the US’s drug war aid to Mexico, their drug related violence continues to spiral out of control with 26,000 people reported missing since 2013 (Shoichet). In 2015, the Mexican Government reported that there were over 160,000 homicides between 2007
“Just Say No!” A statement that takes us deep into yet another decade in the history of the United States which was excited by controversies, social issues, and drug abuse. The topic of this statement is fueled by the growing abuse of cocaine in the mid 1980s. I shall discuss the effects of the crack cocaine epidemic of the mid 1980s from a cultural and social stand point because on that decade this country moved to the rhythms and the pace of this uncanny drug. Cocaine took its told on American society by in the 1980s; it ravaged with every social group, race, class, etc. It reigned over the United States without any prejudices. Crack cocaine was the way into urban society, because of its affordability in contrast to the powdered form. In society the minorities were the ones most affected by the growing excess of crime and drug abuse, especially African Americans; so the question was “Why was nearly everybody convicted in California federal court of crack cocaine trafficking black?” (Webb: Day 3). The growing hysteria brought forth many questions which might seem to have concrete answers, but the fact of the matter is they are all but conspiracy in the end, even though it does not take away the ambiguity and doubt. I will take on only a few topics from the vast array of events and effects this period in time had tended to. Where and who this epidemic seemed to affect more notably, and perhaps how the drugs came about such territories and people. What actions this countries authority took to restore moral sanity, and how it affected people gender wise.
Mandatory minimums for controlled substances were first implemented in the 1980s as a countermeasure for the hysteria that surrounded drugs in the era (“A Brief History,” 2014). The common belief was that stiff penalties discouraged people from using drugs and enhanced public safety (“A Brief History,” 2014). That theory, however, was proven false and rather than less illegal drug activity, there are simply more people incarcerated. Studies show that over half of federal prisoners currently incarcerated are there on drug charges, a 116 percent percentage rise since 1970 (Miles, 2014). Mass incarceration is an ever growing issue in the United States and is the result of policies that support the large scale use of imprisonment on
Before any federal law regarding marijuana was ever proposed, some of the States took it upon themselves to regulate the possession, distribution and consumption of marijuana based on racial prejudice against Chinese immigrants. Referencing law passed by the state of California in 1913 one physician observes that, “The 1913 law received no attention from the press or the public. Instead, it was promulgated as an obscure amendment to the state Poison Law by the California Board of Pharmacy, which was then pioneering one of the nation's earliest, most aggressive anti-narcotics campaigns. Inspired by anti-Chinese sentiment, California was a nationally recognized leader in ...
America's War on Drugs: Policy and Problems. In this paper I will evaluate America's War on Drugs. More specifically, I will outline our nation's general drug history and look critically at how Congress has influenced our current ineffective drug policy. Through this analysis, I hope to show that drug prohibition policies in the United States, for the most part, have failed.
We cannot afford to keep using the same approach in hopes of diminishing our drug problem in the United States. In a study posted on RAND.org, the author Jonathan P. Caulkins compares many methods we can use to help with drug crime. The first graph compares federal mandatory minimum sentences, conventional enforcement at all levels of government, and treatment of heavy users. Conventional enforcement prevented around thirty kilo grams of cocaine from being used, while federal mandatory minimums prevented around forty kilograms from being used. Treatment of heavy users blew both of the other methods out of the water.
Marijuana was outlawed to target Mexican immigrants who used the drug recreationally. According to Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger, Marijuana had a “violent effect on the degenerate races.” As you can see, the main reason most drugs are outlawed is not for health concerns or actual crimes related to the drug, but instead because egotistical white males got the idea that t...
Christian organizations had a meeting with congress and made a claim that drug abusers were hazardous, wicked individuals. These groups thought that the drug use among foreign individuals like the Chinamen and corrupt Mexicans were a threat for the American born individuals. These groups convinced Congress to criminalize drugs. One-hundred years ago some drugs was legal to possess and even children could buy drugs like morphine, opium, marijuana, and cocaine. These drugs if got caught with them today could result in a life sentence it today’s society.
President Reagan established the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) following the passage of the Anti-Abuse Act of 1988 amidst mounting risk of drug dependence becoming more pervasive in American workplaces and schools. The legislation established the need for the federal government to make a good-faith effort in maintaining drug-free work places, schools, and drug abuse and rehabilitation programs for many users (Eddy, 2005). The early focus for the ONDCP’s was to curb the rising drug threat emanating from the drug cartels operating throughout South America, in...
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.
However, in the early 1900’s things changed, and prejudice and fear began to develop around marijuana because it was being used and associated with Mexican immigrants. In the 1930’s, the massive unemployment rates increased public resentment and disgust of Mexican immigrants, which escalated public and governmental concern (PBS, 2014). In 1930 a new federal law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was created. Harry J. Anslinger was appointed the first commissioner of the FBN in 1930 (Filan, 2011). In 1936, as the head of the FBN, Anslinger received several reports about smoking marijuana.
This failure is due in large part, Benson and Rasmussen explain, to drug entrepreneurs’ adoption of new production techniques, new products, and new marketing strategies in response to greater law enforcement. Their “innovations” include lengthening the drug distribution chain and using younger drug pushers and runners (to reduce the risk of arrest and punishment), increasing domestic drug production (to avoid the risk of seizure at the border), smuggling into the country less marijuana and more cocaine (which is harder to detect), development of “crack” cocaine (a low-cost substitute for higher priced powdered cocaine and for marijuana, which the drug war made harder to obtain), and development of drugs with greater potency (because they are less bulky and because punishment is based on a drug’s weight, not its potency).
I. Thesis and Literature Summary In our contemporary society, the media constantly bombards us with horror stories about drugs like crack cocaine. From them, and probably from no other source, we learn that crack is immediately addictive; in every case, we learn that it causes corruption, crazed violence, and almost always leads to death. The government tells us that we are busy fighting a war on drugs and so it gives us various iconic models to despise and detest : we learn to stereotype inner-city minorities as being of drug-infested wastelands and we learn to "witchhunt" drug users within our own communities under the belief that they represent moral sin and pure evil. I believe that these titles and ideals are preposterous and based entirely upon unnecessary and even detrimental ideals promoted by the government to achieve purposes other than those they claim.
The "War on Drugs" Palo Alto: Mayfield, 1986. Kennedy, X.J., Dorothy M. Kennedy, and Jane E. Aaron, eds. The Bedford Reader. 6th ed. of the book.
From the United States point of view, the war on drugs has done nothing but affect the nation and its people negatively. In 2015, 31,027 arrests were made for drug related incidents by the DEA, which in turn causes overcrowding in prison. (DEA) Since 2010, the DEA has seized 2.034 million Kgs of marijuana, 4,864 Kgs of heroin and 156,821 Kgs of cocaine; which
Most Americans regard illegal drugs as one of the nations’ most serious problems, but two generations after the “war on drugs” began, disagreement remains on what should be done.