At the time that William J. Bennett, former Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, gave his speech at Harvard University, former Vice President George H. W. Bush was beginning to involve himself in the media coined term “War on Drugs”. This evidently led to several academics to heavily criticize the effectiveness of making several drugs illegal, who Bennett called the “Intellectuals.” Bennett, in response to the criticism of these intellectuals, passionately claims that these individuals do not provide any practical reasons for drugs to be legalized. Instead, he believes that these intellectuals do not take the issue seriously. Bennett relies on plenty of emotional arguments to enhance his argument that drugs should remain…
Danielle Allen is a columnist for The Washington Post. She also is a political theorist Harvard. Allen published her article, “How the War on Drugs Creates Violence”, on October 16, 2015, in the Washington Post. Allen is a conceivable source due to her notable background in ethics and political thought. She uses a verity of sound sources and argumentative skills to call for the decriminalization of drug use to a public health issue in order to cease the many problems caused by the War on Drugs.…
Dickinson, Tim, and Ethan Nadelmann. "The War on Drugs." Rolling Stone no. 1261 (May 19, 2016): 30-35. Academic Search Premier (accessed June 16,…
The war on drugs is a government agenda to ban illicit substances used for recreation. While the current situation in the nation is the fight to legalize the use of marijuana, the contrived fight against other illegal substances is well under way. The nation has been fighting against the use of illegal substances for years. Unfortunately the fight has not seemed to have accomplished much in the way of ridding the nation of prohibited drugs. While a small number of cities have created successful techniques for reducing the amount of drugs that are on the streets, the majority of areas in the nation has straightforward methods that are not as effective drug crime reduction as the nation would like them to be.…
In his article, “4 Reasons Why Ending the War On Drugs Would Be a Huge Mistake,” from Mic. doctoral student at University of Rochester, James Banks, argues that decriminalizing drugs would cause even more problems in the United States. Banks reports that the U.S. spends an already exponential amount of money on legal drugs, such as painkillers, and that legalized drugs are difficult to mange now. So, decriminalizing drugs would only increase the government’s spending on drug addiction treatment. Furthermore, he argues that even the “less damaging” drug, marijuana, has negative affects like decreasing a person’s work ethic and slowing down their drive.…
Denying American citizens the use of forbidden narcotics and blocking both import and export of any illegal substances, the United States war on drugs is an attempt from government officials to safeguard the public from the use of illegal narcotics. This drug war has had a presence in American history since 1971 when President Nixon addressed the nation stating, “America 's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” Shortly after, new laws were implemented which were intended to deter anyone from consuming or trafficking illegal narcotics within the United States. However, instead of a drug free nation what would follow was an overflow…
The War On drugs has cost the United States a lot of money despite being the War being very unsuccessful. Some say the War On drugs is a war on people or a war on minorities. According, to Dirk Chase Eldridge, the author of “Ending The War On Drugs”, the United States has 5 percent of the world’s population but consumes 60 percent of its illicit drugs. For decades, The United States has conducted a costly, escalating, and largely futile, war on illegal drugs. The War on Drugs has been paid for using billions of taxpayer dollars for decades.…
Howard Campbell’s article, Drug trafficking stories: Everyday forms of Narco-folklore on the U.S.-Mexico border, provides a collection of stories that reveal the commonality of drug dealing and consumption (329). Campbell describes: A woman sells heroin at nightclubs on the other side of the border. Despite being physically handicapped she sells out her product every weekend and picks up men easily because of the quality of her stuff. She feels that what she is doing is wrong but the cocaine she obtains helps her cope with her physical and emotional problems (330).…
Michelle Alexander wrote an interesting article about how people in the U.S are ‘blind’ when it comes to racism called “Drug War Nightmare: How We Created a Massive Racial Caste System in America”. She says that the racial discrimination seems to be fading away but everybody is just ignoring it. She wrote this essay to make people realize that everybody needs to wake up and notice what is happening to the people who are part of the American society. Her essay is very effective and makes us realize what is happening but she has yet to provide a solution for this problem. Alexander uses several appeals to attract readers and her ethos and pathos appeals were the most effective to me.…
The War on Drugs directly impacts the life of almost every American. The program began as a fight against drug abuse and the spread of dangerous operations including and related to drug trafficking into American cities. Each new president, for the most part, has continued the programs of their predecessors. The naissance of the government’s anti-drug program began under the presidency of Richard Nixon. He set the ball in motion by classifying marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug and by directing his government agencies to target black social activists.…
The Mexican drug war is a long and complicated conflict that has only been worsened by most attempts to fix it. The origins of the conflict are in the drug trade and the struggle of power between the different cartels that have fragmented over time, causing ever more bloodshed. The smuggling began in earnest during the long reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, but it was just that – smuggling. Most of the drugs coming through Mexico were actually from Columbia, Peru, and other more southern countries. However, more recently, since the US broke up cocaine smuggling networks in the Caribbean in the 1980s, Mexican cartels have taken on a much larger role in the production, movement, and distribution of illicit drugs.…
Since 2006, the intrastate Mexican Drug War has been an international example of continued policy failure. The complex conflict includes various actors, all of which play a different but important role. There are seven main drug cartels: Beltran-Leyva, Gulf, Juarez, La Familia Michoacana, Los Zetas, Sinaloa, and Tijuana/Arellano Felix. Each cartel maintains its own territory, and some areas are disputed among cartels. For example, Los Zetas controls the Central North and some of the Southeast coast, and the Gulf Cartel reins the Northeast coast.…
The international world has taken a somewhat different approach to stopping drug trafficking. The problem, as seen, is that regions with drug cartels become “unsafe for human rights defenders and journalists that expose the violence; for politicians and security officials that refuse to be corrupted by drug trafficking groups; and, most of all, for its citizens that get caught in crossfire between rivaling gangs.” There have been many countries that, just like the United States, are trying to eliminate drug cartels with war, though if the outcome is positive or not isn’t clear. The Mexican government declared a war on drugs. On the other hand, policymakers in Latin America are saying that there should be no prohibition and a reform for the policies of these illegal drugs.…
The American war on drugs has been a problem since it began in the late 19th century. This so called “war” has been an embarrassment and a failure to the American nation. The war on drugs uses an excess of tax dollars, violates state and individual liberties, and is causing a speedy and frightening deterioration of the Constitution…
Made in America, the War on Drugs was created by Americans, fought by Americans, against Americans, and ended with consequences that have taken an enormous toll on all citizens, not just those in the African American community. The factious war was a nuclear bomb, filled with racism, with a short fuse that was ignited by all the politicians who ran their campaigned based on “law and order” and felt that certain groups of people, such as African Americans, anti-war participants and more, were public enemy number one. The actions and rhetoric used by President Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton played a very integral part in how we ended up with the phenomenon that plagues our country today, mass incarceration. From the “War on Drugs”, mandatory minimum…