Effects Of The War On Drugs

Has the War on Drugs had an impact on your live in any shape or form? Well even if you think it has not, the War on Drugs has had an impact on everyone whether you do know it or not. The failure of the War on Drugs has caused major outburst to the citizens of the United States and many argue if anything progress is being achieved or not and if we should continue down the dark path of failures so far. With President Trump now in office and his strict policy to crack down on drug trafficking we will see if he can turn the vision for the War on Drugs around. The War on Drugs has been a major failure so far and seems like it will continue to fail with no light at the end of the tunnel with things such as something that became a crackdown on racism,

One of the main four people in Nixon's drug policy Attorney General John Mitchell allegedly admitted years later that the War on Drugs was made to target hippies and Blacks (Schou). Katherine Fornili an Assistant Professor for the University of Maryland School of Nursing-Baltimore highlights the racial divide among the black drug offenders saying, " there is no evidence that rates of drug use and distribution vary significantly by race… only 14% of regular drug users are Black, but Blacks constitute almost 34% of drug-related arrests and almost half of drug-related convictions and state prison sentences… the incarceration rate for a Black male is 6.5 times higher than for White male. This shows the great divide that has been brought upon in the United States why are we targeting minority communities and only hurting our own

National polls in recent years have consistently shown that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe the war on drugs cannot be won (Schou). The American people do not see an end to the War on Drugs and feel like we are just funding something that will never work. With countries such as Mexico tying to fight the War on Drugs has caused just in 2016 caused 100,000 deaths (Shultz). Also, with the prohibition of drugs we are helping fund cartels not dismantling them, since they are able to skyrocket the prices on drugs because it is harder for them to smuggle it into the United States. I believe what we need to do is legalize drugs and make them more controlled this will in return make money instead of spending money by taxing drugs and will help shrink the black market, make cartels lose billions of dollars, and will keep people out of jail and into the working class. We also need to help drug addicts instead of punishing them. The legalization and helping rehabilitate drug users has shown great progress by lowering crime rates, lowering drug users, lowering contraction of diseases, and actually lowering the amount of drugs of the streets (Oakford). This shows that if just one country can implement this and make it work then that can also work in the United States and get rid of this failed plan called the War