Ryan Stone . Mrs. Aikey . English 11 Honors, 6Th Hour.

The United States has the world's highest incarceration rate. With five percent of the world's population, our country houses nearly twenty-five percent of the world's reported prisoners. Currently there are approximately two million people in American prisons or jails. Since 1984 the prison population for drug offenders has risen from ten percent to now over thirty percent of the total prison population. Federal prisons were estimated to hold 179,204 sentenced inmates in 2007; 95,446 for drug offenses. State prisons held a total of 1,296,700 inmates in 2005; 253,300 for drug offenses. Sixty percent of the drug offenders in prisons are nonviolent and were purely in prison because of drug offenses (Drug War Facts). The question then arises,

President Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971. Fast forward to the 21st Century, the amount of people going to prison has increased drastically. About 25 percent of the United States population is incarcerated according to according to the Drug Policy Alliance. This is due largely to the war on drugs. With harsher punishment may people are send off to prison for simply possessing. “There were more than 1.5 million drug arrest in the

For almost 40 years now the longest and most unsuccessful war in the United States has been the war on drugs. Resulting in 45million arrests and $1 trillion dollars in government spending, the war on drugs has been nothing more than a way of income for public officers and other law enforcement officials. The effort behind the war on drugs is solemnly to reduce illegal drug use and trade. This plan includes a set of drug policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of these popular and wide spread narcotics.

The term “War on Drugs” was first used by the Nixon administration in the 1970’s, but the country has been enforcing policies against drug use, possession, and distribution since 1914, with the passing of the Harrison Act. They do this mainly through deterrence. The government makes laws and regulations against this kind of behavior and

Drugs first surfaced in the United States in the 1800s. After the Civil War opium become very popular and was used medicinally. Following opium was cocaine which was also used as a health remedy but near the end of the 19th century opium and cocaine abuse peaked and local governments began to prohibit opium dens and importation. In 1914 the first federal drug policy, the Harrison Narcotics act, is passed and drugs are no longer seen as harmless remedies. The act aggressively regulated the manufacturing of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and morphine. During the 50’s more federal drug policies were passed and drugs began to become more criminalized. The 60’s saw a rise in counter-culture and substances such as marijuana and LSD saw widespread use. The demand for drugs skyrocketed in the 1960s. In 1971 President Nixon declared drug abuse America 's number one enemy and proclaimed that we must wave a all out offensive. After President Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971, the United States has spent more than a trillion dollars on this failing policy that not only has had no effect on the amount of drugs being used in the United States and has increased the number of people incarcerated on drug charges from just 50,000 to over half a million, but also has helped fuel drug cartels and foment violence and death through overdoses from uncontrolled drug potency and turf wars between street gangs.

The United States’ prison population is currently number one in the world. As a nation that proclaims freedom for citizens, the United States houses more than one million more persons than Russian and almost one million more persons than China. Currently, the United States makes up five percent of the world’s population and imprisons twenty-five percent of the world’s inmate population. Drug offenders who committed no act of violence make up a large portion of the inmates in the United States. County, State, and Federal prisons are so over populated that the private sector has opened up corporate facilities to house convicted persons. The cost each year to hold a person rises, placing larger financial demands on the judicial system. The Judicial System of the United States should reevaluate the sentencing guidelines for non-violent drug offenders to alleviate the high number of people in the prison system.

In the 1970s, President Nixon declared a war on drugs. The War on Drugs is a government movement aiming toward a prohibition of illegal drugs. Nixon dramatically increased drug control agencies, and reinforced the mandatory sentence. He placed the crime in the most restrictive category of drugs. The original budget for waging this war was one trillion dollars. In October of 1982, President Ronald Reagan declared a war on drugs. It marked the beginning of a long period of incarceration. Reagan increased anti-drug spending and increased the number of federal drug enforcement. During his campaign, he integrated the dog whistle strategy to discriminate against the African Americans. Since there was a mass incarceration of African Americans

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.

In 1971 President Nixon declared an all-out war on drugs, now over a million non-violent drug offenders live behind bars. The war on drugs has been the longest, most costly, and destructive war in the US history as of today (Booth , 2007). The war on drugs focuses on the poor people, and not the bankers that launder the money. In 1973 Nixon created the DEA, which stands for Drug Enforcement Agency. The DEA is a federal agency responsible for enforcing laws and regulations governing narcotics, and controlled substances. Their job is to immobilize drug trafficking organizations. When Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971, the federal budget was 101 million dollars, going into the year 2000; the federal budget allegation was 20 billion dollars. Half of what we spend in the court systems and prison is drug related (Booth , 2007).

The War on Drugs began in increments, first with President Nixon and secondly with President Reagan (Hill, Oliver, Marion, 2012). While under the Nixon administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration was developed due to the thought of how drugs can affect an individual as well as a community. Drugs did not only affect the user and the community, but also the families as well as children. Out of all the presidents, it is documented that President Nixon was one who had discussions about drugs more than any other president (Hill, et al., 2012).

In the late 1960's and early 1970's, the federal government began to increasingly tighten drug laws. In 1972, President Richard Nixon formally declared a "War on Drugs", which continues

The War on Drugs is a term that is commonly applied to the campaign of prohibition of drugs. The goal of this campaign is to reduce the illegal drug trade across America. This term “ War on Drugs” was used during Nixon’s campaign in which he declared War on Drugs during a press conference in 1971. Following this declaration many organizations were created to stop the spread of drugs, like the DEA and Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement. Note that Nixon’s approach to this problem was to fund treatment rather than law enforcement. After Nixon’s retirement from office, most of the funding went from going into treatment to the law enforcement. Which militarized the police force giving the officer’s military weapons and gear. With this, the sentencing for possessing drugs was changed as well, resulting incarcerations rates to increase overtime. The increase of incarceration rates started to create many patterns that were soon noticeable. The funding’s that go into the law enforcement has shown to greatly have an affect on the incarceration rates.

The War on Drugs, like the war on Terrorism, is a war that America may not be able to afford to win. For over forty years the United States has been fighting the War on Drugs and there is no end in sight. It has turned into a war that is about politics and economics rather than about drugs and criminals. The victims of this war are numerous; but perhaps they are not as numerous as those who benefit from the war itself.

The War on Drugs has been a long and difficult road for humankind. So many drugs exist today, from street drugs to recreational use to prescription and over-the-counter medications. They all affect anyone who uses them. Some give you an inebriated high and if overused and can lead to death. Drugs that were originally intended to cure an illness or disease are being combined to form an illegal substance. When it comes to curing the illness that was made by the drug, rehabilitation and programs are not always accessible to the public. The issue we have as today with drugs, is getting people to stop using them incorrectly and to regulate the use of drugs in a

To start, I wanted to familiarize myself on the history of drugs and what has already been done. To prevent how easy it is to get these drugs. An Editorial by the Britannica about the war on drugs in the past 50 years in the U.S. It goes over what has been put in place to prevent drug use and laws. It talks about all of the actions that ronald reagan did to start the war on drugs in the U.S. The War on Drugs began in June 1971 when U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon declared drug abuse to be the “public enemy number one” and increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and drug-treatment efforts. This was a huge step forward in the war against drugs, in the fact that with the funding the government created the DEA (US Drug Enforcement Administration). The DEA Job is to controlled substances laws and