Persuasive Essay On Drug War

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America’s public enemy number one in the united states is drug abuse “What drugs haven’t destroyed, the war against them has.” Nobody jails their population to the level that the US does Since 1971, the war of drugs has cost over $1 trillion and resulted in more than 45 million arrests. During that time, illegal drug use has remained unchanged. Addiction is an effect of human unhappiness and human suffering. When people are distress, they want to sooth their distress. When people are in pain, they want to sooth their pain. The real question is not why the addiction, but why the pain. Drug laws carry with them what are called mandatory minimum sentencing. With only 5% of the worlds population, the US holds 25% of its prisoners. Over 500,000 are incarcerated on nonviolent drug charges. You cannot but notice that at any stage of the drug war, black americans are represented disproportionately. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, there are more …show more content…

Flew through Congress in record time, no hearings held, no consolations with experts on drug abuse, nothing. With overwhelming support, Regan signed into law an unprecedented array of mandatory sentences for drug crimes. The penalties for crack cocaine were made 100 times more punitive than powder cocaine. Acceptance of coke is widespread among professionals. Whites used powder cocaine in boardrooms, in suburban America. Blacks were using crack cocaine in public housing, on the street. The number of blacks in prisons skyrocketed. A defendant with five grams of crack cocaine is treated the same as a powder cocaine defendant with five hundred grams of crack cocaine. All crack cocaine comes from powder cocaine, the only difference is the addition of baking soda, water, and heat from an oven. What’s interesting is that African Americans only make up 13% of the US population and they are about 13% of the crack users. 90% of the crack defendants in the federal system are African

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