Cocaine Race And The War On Drugs Essay

For many years, drugs have been the center of crime and the criminal justice system in the United States. Due to this widespread epidemic, President Richard Nixon declared the “War on Drugs” in 1971 with a campaign that promoted the prohibition of illicit substances and implemented policies to discourage the overall production, distribution, and consumption. The War on Drugs and the U.S. drug policy has experienced the most significant and complex challenges between criminal law and the values of today’s society. With implemented drug polices becoming much harsher over the years in order to reduce the overall misuse and abuse of drugs and a expanded federal budget, it has sparked a nation wide debate whether or not they have created more harm than good. When looking at the negative consequences of these policies not only has billions of dollars gone to waste, but the United States has also seen public health issues, mass incarceration, and violent drug related crime within the black market in which feeds our global demands and economy. With this failed approach for drug prohibition, there continues to be an increase in the overall production of illicit substances, high rate of violence, and an unfavorable impact to our nation.

Cocaine, a narcotic drug that took the entire world by storm in the 1980’s, has continued to find it’s way into countries all over the world. The drug is a highly addictive stimulant that is extracted from the leaves of the Erythroxylon coca bush, which is indigenous to the Andean highlands of South America. It comes in two main forms, powder and crystalline, also known as “crack” (“Cocaine Use and Its Effects”). Although the short term effects of cocaine seem somewhat harmless, the long term effects are devastating and have ruined the lives of many users. The short and long term effects of cocaine can be seen on Ishmael Beah, and his companions in the novel A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah.

“Cocaine is a naturally occurring chemical found in the leaves of Erythroxylum coca or coca plant, which is native to South America” (Cocaine Hydrochloride). The leaves of the coca plant

Cocaine (coke) is made from the Erythroxylon coca plant, a coca tree that grows high in the Andes Mountains of South America. The coca farmers' purpose is to pick and

Crack cocaine has been popular since the 1970s and mid 1980s. Crack cocaine is not a new drug; this drug is obtained from coca plant which grows mainly in South America. For many years, the native South American Indians chewed its leaves to develop strength and increased energy. By the 1800s, the cocaine was secluded from its leaves and used as a medicinal drug. By the late 1800s, it was used as an anesthetic and to avert surgical hemorrhage. The next century, people recognized crack cocaine an addictive narcotic and its non-medical use of the drug was ended by the Harrison Narcotics Act in 1914 (“How crack cocaine works?”).

“The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners. The cost of housing all those inmates: $80 billion a year” (Whitaker, 2016). The United States (U.S.) has been fighting an unwinnable war for the past thirty years. The U.S. government and the War on Drugs has disproportionately impacted African Americans and the prison population has quadrupled over the last thirty years. The U.S Government polices of the war on drugs have contributed to the mass incarceration of African American males due to sentencing and race disparities, over-policing, and anti-drug policies.

The War on Drugs was the United Sates government’s attempt to stop the sale and use of illegal drug use. It consisted of anti-drug legislation all with the plan to end drug abuse in America. President Nixon declared and coined the phrase “War on drugs” and increased drug control agencies and pushed for harder sentencing for drug offenses. The war on drugs is an issue that we are still fighting and many of the policies put in place did more harm than good. The drug war affected all people, but it had unequal outcomes for different racial groups and many of the historical pieces of legislation put in place impacted these outcomes and are still affecting many people of color today.

These cause problems that changes everyone around us in different states or people standing next you. It became a law when too many people kept getting caught with it at school or even by the police. It made things much more difficult for the school and cops to do their job and protect everyone if they have to deal with one person or a couple people about it.

Most war on drugs is built on racial injustice. In spite of roughly equal rates of drug use and sales, African-American men have been arrested at least 5-13 times the rate of white men on drug charges in the U.S. With rates up to at least 50-60 times in some states. African Americans and Latinos together make up about 29-35 percent of the total U.S. population, but more than 75 percent of drug law violators in state and federal prisons.

As such, Congress would pass the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act to criminalize any sort of association with a so called “controlled substance” (Stone 310). By Ronald Reagan’s presidency, this effort reached new heights especially after the widely publicized cocaine-related death of basketball player Len Bias (311). The hysteria over cocaine received so much attention then that people began to see the dangers they entailed, which inevitably contributed to the enactment of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 under the Reagan administration (312). For the purpose of this paper, this law detailed the sentencing and punishment of drug offenders. The interesting part, however, lies in how Congress differentiated between the mandatory minimum sentence necessary for crack and powder cocaine. While crack and powder are simply different forms of cocaine, crack holds less cocaine per dose as the powder form undergoes the process to become a base that can be smoked instead of inhaled (306). This distinction is significant in the making of the conditions that constitute the 1986 Act. Because a dose of crack does contain less cocaine than its powder counterpart, Congress specifically distinguished that crack offenders would be punished more severely than someone else possessing the same amount of (powder) cocaine; the mandatory minimum of five

Capitalism is working as it was meant to work. Capitalism is creating wealth among the United States and the world. Yet, this wealth is concentrated and is creating many social issues such as a disappearing middle class, health and environmental destruction. In the United States, the top 400 wealthiest people in the country own half of the entire wealth of the nation (Robert Reich). We no longer have a government that is for the people, but rather a government that is for big business. Policy is made by and for the corporations of america. We are repeating history with the wealth gap that has not been seen since the last depression. As the soon to be majority demographic in this country I look forward to the position of being able to use education

After many thousands of years of people chewing on coca leaves from South America to obtain their mildly stimulating effects, the chemical substance, cocaine, is now extracted from that same leaf and is currently classified as a Schedule II drug. Cocaine is a stimulant and can be used legally, in some cases, by medical providers as a type of anesthesia. It is more well-known as an illegal, highly addictive drug that also goes by other names such as coke, snow, and blow. When the chemical cocaine was initially being removed from the coca leaf, more than one-hundred years ago, it was being used as an additive in early medications and in drinks. In the late 1800’s and very early 1900’s cocaine was an ingredient in the popular soda Coca-Cola. In the early 1900’s the addictive nature of products containing cocaine were becoming a concern and

The shrubs and plants from which both drugs are derived from and processed has been well known in Colombia for centuries, but until the 1970s drug refiners and traffickers had not taken full advantage. The chewing of coca

According to Michelle Alexander, why and how has the “war on drugs” developed over the last 40 years? What are the main political and economic factors that led to the war on drugs, and what are the main political and economic factors that shaped it as it developed over the last four decades? Draw on material from the Foner textbook chapters 25 through 28 to supplement Alexander’s discussion of the political and economic context.

Cocaine is made from the leaves of the coca plant which was first found in the andes, where indigenous people used the plant to cope with high altitude sickness. The molecular formula of cocoaine is C17H21NO4. Cocaine is an alkanoid ester. This means that it is an organic compound which contains nitrogen, (in a negative oxidation state), and is not widely common amongst living organisms unlike something like carbohydrates (e.g. glucose) which are used by most organisms for energy. It is used for clinical purposes as an anaesthetic and vasoconstrictor, usually in the ear, nose and throat. Its anaesthetic properties arise from the way it can bind itself to the sodium channels and blocking them simultaneously. Through stabilising the neuronal