In the beginning of the documentary, The House I Live In, President Nixon gives a speech declaring, “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” In 1971, this speech made Preside Nixon the first president to ever declare a “war on drugs” in America. He fought by battling, both the supply and demand for drugs. Karst J. Besteman (1989) describes this “war” as a “strong initiative against drug dealers and expansion of drug treatment facilities” (p. 290). The beginning of Nixon’s “war” was focused on providing treatment and rehabilitation, after the creation of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in 1973, the focal point of the …show more content…
The problem is millions of dollars is being spent on “drug enforcement from prisons, probation officers, judges, narcotics” (Jarecki, 2012) however drugs is still on our streets, it is still a major problem in the United States because the demand for it is high. The documentary shows that people get into selling drugs because it provides an income that allows the individuals to pay their bills and still have nice luxurious items, basically the benefit outweighs the cost. As stated in the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics, “The primary mission of the social work profession is to enhance human well-being…with particular needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed and living in poverty.” (NASW Code of Ethics, preamble). From the documentary, many of the people that was interviewed was either living in poverty and/or oppressed, from a social worker perspective understanding that the “war on drugs” has increased incarceration rates within the United States, which has affected mostly poor African-American neighborhoods. As a social worker we can advocate, on a macro level, for all who is affected through education and fighting to change the laws. Laws such as, the mandatory minimum sentencing, which has “deprived judges of flexibility to tailor punishment in individual cases” (Cassell & Luna, 2011 p. 219) from the documentary, a man was looking at a minimum twenty-five years, his sentencing would be
“Over 40 year ago president nixon, Declared Drug abuse public enemy number one, starting an unprecedented global Campaign, the war on drug.
Nowadays addiction is just as controversial a topic as political correctness. Should drug abusers be helped, or should they be imprisoned? According to the Richard Nixon in 1971, the latter is the correct answer and drug abuse was made “public enemy number one in the United States”. The long term effects of the decision were unprecedented and the war on drugs still goes on today with billions of tax payer dollars wasted and millions of people’s lives ruined all because of an addiction that they lack the wherewithal to fix.
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.
What if I told you that a crusade against narcotics has resulted in an overdose epidemic? This has been exactly what the United States Drug War has done. The War on Drugs is considered to have started in 1914 with the ban on opium and cocaine. Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s is considered to be an important chapter of the War on Drugs. But it was not until June 1971 that President Nixon officially declared a "war on drugs." He enforced this by drastically expanding federal drug control agencies and mandatory minimum sentencing for those arrested for drug crimes. Defenders of the drug war assert that zealous enforcement is the correct way of dealing with America's drug dilemma. However, it has only accomplished increasing the prison population by putting nonviolent offenders behind bars. It has also done nothing to lessen the overdose crisis. This catastrophic, failing war has to meet its end, as it is having many tragic effects such as the production of stronger, deadlier drugs, increased drug use, and has been wildly ineffectual throughout history.
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 documentary, The House I Live in, explains how drug use is a social problem and gives statists on whether the war on drugs is effective or not. Some say the war on drugs is very effective and it helping with society, others believe the total opposite that the war on drugs has no effect on society. Since 1971, the rate of illegal drug use has remained unchanged, but with that being said the war on drugs has resulted in more than forty-five million arrests. The war on drugs has cost over one trillion dollars so far to run. This makes many people believe that it is a waste of tax money. When Nixon was president, he compromised two-thirds of his budget to fund treatments and rehabilitation centers instead of putting money directly into law enforcement. During the time, the rehabilitation programs were working miracles. The programs kept many individuals from going back to jail and most importantly helped them stay away from drugs. These programs did not last long because the resources to keep the programs running became scarce. Taxpayers also did not like the programs, many rather pay for individuals who are doing drugs to be placed behind bars. Not only does the war on drugs have many positive contributions that come along with it; but it also has an equal amount of negatives. Therefore, the war on drugs is a running epidemic. The effectiveness of the war on drugs is unchangeable due to the targeting of class and race, police officers unwillingness to change drug
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).
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" is associate yank expression sometimes connected to a crusade of forestalling of drugs, military guide, and military intercession, with the expressed purpose being to reduce the unlawful medication exchange. This activity incorporates an appointment of medication approaches that are expected to discourage the creation, dispersion, associate degreed utilization of mind-bending medicine that the taking an interest governments and therefore the world organization have created illicit. The term was advanced by the media shortly when an issue and answer session given on June eighteen, 1971, by Joined States President Richard Nixon—the day when distribution of a rare message from President to the Congress on Medication palm dodging and Control—amid that he pronounced medication mishandle "open foe variety one". That message to the Congress enclosed content concerning committing additional government assets to the "anticipation of recent addicts, and
This documentary showed a strong depiction of the punishment side of the judicial system, many of the people in the video were first time nonviolent offenders that were caught with small amounts of drugs on them. President Regan’s declaration of the War on Drugs to due to the crack epidemic is a prime example of how these three concept comes in to play. With its $1.7 billion dollar budget, Regan’s War on Drugs began the mandatory minimum penalty for drug offenses, promoted racial inequalities in the prison population and did very little to reduce the availability of drug on the street. Whereas his wife first lady Nancy Reagan create the drug awareness campaign “Just Say No”, in order to discourage youths from engaging in recreational drug use. On the other hand President Nixon second platform on the War on drugs, demonstrate a focus on the prevention of new addicts and the rehabilitation of those that addicted, however it did not receive as much support or attention as the eradication and incarceration of drugs.
3). Nixon, wanted to redouble efforts against the sale, distribution, and consumption of illicit drugs. Nixon quoted Abraham Lincoln as stating, “No one was above the law or below the law” (as cited in DuVernay, 2016, 14:14). There was an outcry for law in order and Nixon expressed it perfectly that drugs were becoming a “war” and they had to fight. Nixon stated, that American’s public enemy number one in the United States was drug abuse (as cited in DuVernay, 2016, 17:03). Cory Green and co-founder of H.O.L.L.A observed (2016) that when you create a situation where people are terrified you can always justify putting people in prison cells (as cited in DuVernay, 2016, 28:22). When you create a sense of fearfulness and anxiety people are going to react to those emotions. Therefore, hundreds of thousands of people were being sent to jail for low-level offenses for simple possession of marijuana which makes half of our federal inmates. According to the attorney and author Bryan Stevenson (2016), “[America] decided to deal with drug addiction and drug dependency as a crime issue rather than a health issue” (as cited in DuVernay, 2016, 16:49). In addition, in the 1980’s a new drug emerges, crack cocaine. Civilians were no longer viewing them as criminals but as animals, beast, and monsters that needed to be control. For example, Marc Mauer noted that in record time Congress constructed and established a mandatory sentencing penalties for crack that were much
Prevention and Control Act of 1970 was a milestone in strengthening the war, as it gave the federal government an upper hand in fighting drug abuse. In 1971, President Nixon declared that drug abuse was “the number-one public enemy,” and stepped up efforts directed at fighting the scourge. Besides enforcement of the law, the president emphasized the need to treat drug addicts. He also engaged celebrities in spreading the news about the negative effects of drugs.
The united states spends a lot of money keeping dangerous criminals in prisons and off of the streets. The phrase a lot hardly does justice describing a figure like 70 billion dollars. Unfortunately, almost 50 percent of these ‘criminals’ America spends that wad of cash on were arrested for non-violent drug charges, and are not a danger to America’s safety at all. Drugs are no good, but do not cause harm to anyone but the user. That is, until these drugs are made illegal and drug cartels see huge profits in the illegal trade that they are willing to kill for. In 1971 President Nixon waged, quite dramatically, a full-blown war against drugs abuse, claiming that addiction is directly related to crime. Instead of offering therapy for addicts, the plan from 1971 and on was to incarcerate them, and ruin their lives far more so than the drugs ever had. The war on drugs should be discontinued to cease wasteful spending, end the incarceration of peaceful peoples, and prevent the deaths of officers and citizens alike.
In 1971, President Nixon created the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 commonly known as the War on Drugs. The war on drugs was implemented to combat production, distribution, and consumption of illegal drugs (Olaya & Angel, 2017). In 2007, law enforcement officers made approximately two million drug arrests in the United States (Potter, 2014). Supporters state that the war on drugs was successful because it lowered some drug users in the United States, created a deterrence in crime, as well as it provided stability in areas that were volatile and impoverished. On the other hand, critics of the war on drugs argue that the war on drugs did not diminish crime instead it created an
"The War on Drugs" is an American term commonly applied to a campaign of prohibition of drugs, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to reduce the illegal drug trade. Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971. the war on drugs wasn't meant to make America safer or more productive. It was meant to mute President Richard Nixon's toughest critics, to criminalize black people and so-called anti-war hippies.