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war on drugs esaay
explain successes of war on drugs
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Since the introduction of narcotics in the United States, American society has felt the effects of drug use in all aspects of daily living. As drug use heightened to new levels in the 1980's the Bush Administration chose to declare a "war" on drugs. Never before in our history had crime been combated with war. This war led to the militarization of the United States' tactics for overcoming illegal drug use in the U.S. Instead of choosing to combat drug use by putting greater effort into reducing demand the Bush Administration chose to decrease illegal drug supply.
This required reducing drug supplies from Latin America, an area where most of the illegal drugs are produced and trafficked. The Clinton Administration has chosen to maintain the drug "war". The administration has not changed the distribution of funds that are used for combating the drug problem. The drug war has continued to demonstrate limited success, yet militarization has increased along with spending. Since the beginning of the drug "war" Latin American nations have been targeted by the United States.
Latin American nations are believed to be the among the major illegal drug producers in the world. Illicit drug cultivation has more than tripled in the last four or five years. Today, Colombia is the world's leading source of cocaine and the leading cultivator of coca, the raw material for cocaine (Reuters). In 1986 Washington passed the International Narcotics Control Act which required foreign countries to cooperate with U.S. efforts in drug-enforcement.
The countries could not be "certified" by the U.S. unless they complied with U.S. demands. The executive order given by the President is passed through Congress, where it is negotiated and then ratified.
Certification means a continuation of aid from the United States and gains U.S. favor in international financial situations. Most Latin American countries oppose the process but agree to the laws demanded (Casteneda). Colombia is included in the group of nations seeking re-certification every year. In 1996 Colombia did not receive certification, but was given a "vital national interest waiver". In 1997 Colombia again failed to be certified by the U.S.
because it was believed that the Colombian government was not doing everything in its power to combat narcotics. The penalties for decertification included the prohibition of more than $1.5 billion in U.S. trade financing and investment guarantees. "Decertification" also means that the U.S. is obliged to vote against multilateral loans for Colombia in international financial institutions.
Youngers, Coletta. 2001. “Collateral Damage: U.S. Drug Control Efforts in the Andes.” Paper presented for the meeting of “The Latin American Studies Association,” The Washington Office on Latin America, Washington D.C., September 6-8.
Moreover, the Roosevelt Corollary was passed by President Theodore Roosevelt and affirmed that the United States has the right to intervene in Latin America in order to alleviate the economies of Latin American countries that were unable to pay their international debts. The Roosevelt Corollary resulted in U.S. involvement in various countries throughout Latin America, explicitly the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Nicaragua. In the Do...
Illegal drug trade in Colombia is the practice of producing and distributing narcotics domestically and around the world. As of 2012, Colombia was the world leading cocaine producer in the world (Neuman, 2012). Cocaine, marijuana and heroin along with other illegal drugs have become a big part of Colombians lifestyle and a major source of income for many people. Since the establishment of the War on Drugs in the late 20th century, European countries and United States have provided billions of dollars, logistics and military aid to the Colombia government to combat the illegal drug trade (Lilley, 2006). As of 1999, Plan Colombia has been one of the biggest movements towards Colombia’s biggest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The movement was implemented as Colombia supplies 80% of cocaine to American citizens (Vellinga, 2000). The US Drug Enforcement Administration estimated that Colombia’s annual profit ranges between $5-7 billion from drugs smuggled into the United States.
The film, American Drug War: The Last White Hope was directed by Kevin Booth. He lost four close people who were addicted to alcohol, nicotine and prescription pain killers. Through this film he portrayed how the war on drugs in the United States is a way for those in power and on wall street to profit meanwhile incarcerating the poor people who sell to get food on the table or are addicted to drugs. President Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Agency and the scheduling of drugs eventually declaring a war on drugs. Since his presidency the American government has been in a state of war on the fight against illegal drug use. There has been no advancements in this war, if anything the drugs are winning. It was stated in the film that there are
How the commodity chain works isn’t only on the product, there’s a responsibility needed to be reached by the organization and geographical sense as well. This however, is more difficult for the cocaine commodity chain because of its illicit status. Geographically, the growth of the coca leaf depends on what it needs to grow, therefore the leaf is grown in Peru and Bolivia. The production of the cocaine was from Cuba and Chile then smuggled into the United States for distribution. The way this commodity chain is spaced out makes a lot of sense. Peru and Bolivia, side by side countries on the coast of South America produce the coca to be shipped along the coast to Cuba and Chile to be processed. By having these places on the coast, it puts transaction costs to a minimum saving them money. By different productions being in different places in order for them to work it labels the cocaine commodity chain as a social division of labour. Once the cocaine was in the United States, there were three main groups. The main man, this guy was responsible for bringing it into the country and making the connection to Southern America to receive their shipment. Then it is brought to the wholesalers. The wholesalers are responsible for distributing large amounts of cocaine to their dealers; who then sell in smaller amounts to consumers.
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.
... producer. In the United States 1 in 6 people have claimed to have used cocaine in their life. There are still cartels that are drug traffickers today. As of today there has not been an alternative drug to help addicts stop cocaine use like there has been for many other hardcore drugs.
In Jeanette Schmidt’s article, Transporting Cocaine states, “Colombian cartels would pay the Mexican groups as much as $1,000/kilo to smuggle cocaine into the United States” (Schmidt, 2). The Colombian cartels would then pick up the drugs and resume distribution and sales efforts, making personal profits that are unrecorded. In order to seize these individuals who are growing in power and numbers, the U.S. must control the connections between Mexico and Columbia. Mexico is the biggest transporter amongst Columbia and the U.S. because it shares a border with the U.S. This increasingly poisonous drug trafficking leads to drug dealers...
It is also very important for people to know about this topic because the issue is not only about drugs but also the growth of inequality between the rich and poor, black and white, upper class and lower class in this country. The war of drugs deals with issues about why they were passed through congress and if there were motives that deals connect directly to black communities. The issues where brought about in Dan Baum book entitled “Smoke and Mirrors” where John Erlichmann, the chief domestic affair advisor talk about how the Drug War fever has been escalated and manipulated from its modest beginnings at the start of the Nixon administration and clarifies the various interests which that escalation has served. He talks about the Drug War on “blacks” and “hippies” but politicians could not say that so had to say the War on “heroin” and “Marijuana”. He also said that “We knew drugs were not the health problem we were making it out to be, but there were political benefits to be gained." This shows that there is more to the war of drugs that the government is letting on.
Despite the question of which country is doing the producing or distributing, the issues that the respective nations face remains the same. The drug trade turns nations into war battle grounds for opposing cartels and smaller gang factions, it provides no positive and optimistic future for the youth who are plagued by the violence and crime every day of their lives. The drug trade provides yet another issue for governments who are trying to combat issues such as debt and poverty. Here we have a multibillion dollar industry primarily in many countries that could be categorized as being part of the “third world,” the whole notion is a paradox. This leads one to the question of what can and should be done. Do the leaders of Latin American nations continue to combat an industry that arguably hold more power than they do or do these governments use this lucrative industry to their benefit in hopes of regulating it in such a way that it could then support the economy and bring the state out of poverty and debt, raising the GDP in an somewhat unconventional way. Essentially, the drug trade wouldn’t exists nor would it be so successful if there was no need for illegal substances and abuse of them. It’s hard to compare the variations of involvement from country to country because they are all suffering from the same injustice. One might find that if the approach that is currently sprouting in the United States, where the decriminalization of marijuana is becoming more widespread, was used in these in these Latin American counties, if this would still be such an issue, “Some Latin American analysts anticipated that the possible passage of California’s Proposition 19 in November 2010 – which sought to legalize the cultivation, distribution, and possession of marijuana in the state – would signal the
. “The illegal drug market in the United States is one of the most profitable in the world. As such, it attracts the most ruthless, sophisticated, and aggressive drug traffickers.” Throughout the years drug trafficking has been a major issue in America. These issues have impacted our economy, security, which promote new laws and policies throughout the U.S. and among our boarders. Drug Trafficking has created conflict with other countries such as Mexico. “…criminal groups operating from neighboring Mexico smuggle cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, amphetamine, and marijuana into the United States. These criminal groups have smuggled heroin and marijuana across the Southwest Border and distributed them throughout the United States since the 1970s.” (Policy Almanac).
A former director of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency’s Mexican office once stated:” The heroin market abhors a vacuum.” The truth in this statement can be extended to not only the heroin trade but also the trade of numerous other drugs of abuse; from cocaine to methamphetamines, the illicit drug trade has had a way of fluidity that allows insert itself into any societal weakness. Much like any traditional commodity good, illicit drugs have become not only an economy in and of themselves, they have transformed into an integral part of the legitimate global economy. Whether or not military or law enforcement action is the most prudent or expedient method of minimizing the ill-effects of the illicit drug trade is of little consequence to the understanding of the economic reality of its use in the United States ongoing “War on Drugs”. As it stands, not only has the illicit drug trade transformed itself into a self-sufficient global economy, so too has the drug-fighting trade. According to a CNN report in 2012, in the 40 years since the declaration of “The War on Drugs”, the United States Federal Government has spent approximately $1 trillion in the fight against illicit drugs. Additionally, a report in the New York Times in 1999 estimates that federal spending in the “War on Drugs” tops $19 billion a year and state and local government spending nears $16 billion a year. Given the sheer magnitude of federal, state, and local spending in the combat of the illicit drug trade, one would reasonably expect that the violence, death, and destruction that so often accompanies the epicenters of the drug economy would be expelled from the close proximity of the United States. While this expectation is completely reasonable to the ...
Colombia is a country that is rich in soil and the most fertile in the world. Because Colombia has such rich and limitless resources it comes at a high price. One of these resources is considered to be a life line to a better life, which is called the coca leaf. Cocaine is a drug that has been around for many years. This drug hasn 't always been for recreational uses but just known as a pure coca leaf in the jungle. The coca leaf has not only transformed it 's self into a money-making drug but it has also transformed Colombia into the main supplier to all countries for its pure cocaine drug, making Colombia one of the most dangerous places in the world.
The United States has a long history of intervention in the affairs of one it’s southern neighbor, Latin America. The war on drugs has been no exception. An investigation of US relations with Latin America in the period from 1820 to 1960, reveals the war on drugs to be a convenient extension of an almost 200 year-old policy. This investigation focuses on the commercial and political objectives of the US in fighting a war on drugs in Latin America. These objectives explain why the failing drug policy persisted despite its overwhelming failure to decrease drug production or trafficking. These objectives also explain why the US has recently exchanged a war on drugs for the war on terrorism.
At even the national level, the “war on drugs” was just as detrimental. Reagan's narcotics policy had doubled both drug arrests and the prison population in the US. Under him, the media propaganda helped ignite public concern – sometimes bordering hysteria – which effectively created “a mandate for a massive campaign against drugs –an intensified federal enforcement effort, harsher prison sentences, and omnipresent narcotics surveillance of ordinary Americans.” Bush's “war on drugs”, an