Argumentative Essay: The War On Drugs

The war on drugs began in June 1971, President Nixon decided to take a dramatic increase in size and presence on the federal drug control agencies. In the beginning, the main focus was on marijuana, but eventually the focus has been spread among all different types of narcotics. Since the war on drugs has started the United States has wasted around $51,000,000,000 (50 billion) yearly, and is rising more and more each year. It has spent over a trillion dollars total. Although, the government uses billions of dollars yearly not much gets accomplished, proving that the war on drugs is failing. I believe that the war on drugs is considered a failure, should be terminated and or restructured. Enforcing the drug control system costs around $100 billion dollars a year.These are shocking numbers and is even more striking to know that very little is actually done. Law enforcement measures have unaffected the price of drugs, which means that the majority of dealers are unaffected by any of the so called enforcement. In fact, the prices of some drugs have actually decreased over the past years. Despite all the money spent to try to fix the

Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, talked about the war on drugs saying “Instead of reducing violence, Mexico’s ‘war on drugs’ has resulted in a dramatic increase in killings torture, and other appalling abuses by security forces, which only make the climate of lawlessness and fear worse in many parts of the country.” Mexico’s war on drug has only created a higher death rate as well as increasing the torture rate for criminals. The US drug-war homicide tally is nearly three times greater than the amount of US soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the first shots had been fired, which proves that the US war on drugs are killing more than they are helping. Therefore, ending the war on drugs would end the