The War on Drugs

Today the number are in the war on drug is a huge failure with devastated unintended consequences, it lead to mass incarceration in the us, to corruption, to political destabilization, and violence in latin america, asia, and africa. To systemic human right abuse across the world.”-Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

For many years, a real push has been looming on the idea of legalizing now illegal drugs. This has become a hot debate throughout nations all over the world, from all walks of life. The dispute over the idea of decriminalizing illegal drugs is and will continue on as an ongoing conflict. In 2001, Drug decriminalization in all drugs, including cocaine and heroin, became a nationwide law in Portugal (Greenwald). Ethan Nadelman, essayist of “Think again: Drugs,” states his side of the story on the continuing criminalization of hard drugs, in which he stand to oppose. Whether it is for the good of human rights or not, decriminalizing drugs may be a good head start for a new beginning.

In the past forty years, the United States has spent over $2.5 trillion dollars funding enforcement and prevention in the fight against drug use in America (Suddath). Despite the efforts made towards cracking down on drug smugglers, growers, and suppliers, statistics show that addiction rates have remained unchanged and the number of people using illegal drugs is increasing daily (Sledge). Regardless of attempts to stem the supply of drugs, the measure and quality of drugs goes up while the price goes down (Koebler). Now with the world’s highest incarceration rates and greatest illegal drug consumption (Sledge), the United States proves that the “war on drugs” is a war that is not being won.

Today the number are in the war on drug is a huge failure with devastated unintended consequences, it lead to mass incarceration in the us, to corruption, to political destabilization, and violence in latin america, asia, and africa. To systemic human right abuse across the world.”-Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

“Drug policy regarding the control of the traditional illicit substances (opiates, cocaine, cannabis) is currently moving through upbeat times in almost all Western countries. Prohibition on the basis of repressive law enforcement not only seems to fail on a large scale, but also to create vast additional costs, problems, and harm for drug consumers, who often find themselves in extreme social, economic, and health conditions” (Fischer 1995: 389).

Drug trafficking in the United States has established itself to be one of the most profitable businesses in today’s world (U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, 2004). There is such a high demand as more people buy, use and sell drugs for a variety of reasons, not really knowing all the risk that are at stake. With new laws in affect and more determined citizens of the U.S. everyone can help keep the streets clean. Drug trafficking is at an all-time high and must be brought to a halt.

Mark A.R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Angela Hawken. Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford University Press, 2011.

For many people, the thought of making drugs easily accessible for consumption by the masses may be frightening. After all, we have drug laws in place because they have the potential to be harmful. It also may not be difficult to imagine that it could very well be subject to failure due to a numerous amount negative externalities that may occur. Our nation has been engaged in a war on drugs for several decades now. The effectiveness of this war, however, is a topic that has continuously been debated. Some argue that universal legalization of drugs, an alternative that has never been tried, may have a greater benefits when compared to the present state of the war on drugs. On the other hand, the opposition believes that legalization would only pave the way for a vast amount of crime and many wasted resources.

One would be the social cost of the war on drugs on the economy in a finical perspective. The amount of money being spent and put into the war on drugs including on law enforcement comes with a price. Creating new regulations, strategies, and team of specialized drug law enforcement, the amount of money being spent can easily exceed set budgets. Another social cost is the lack of focus on other social issues that suffer due to spending on the war on drugs. This means that there are less programs and opportunities for issues such a health care, education, government assistance etc. that effect citizens and their daily lives. Corruption could also be a social cost of policing on the war on drugs. This refers to those in higher authorities in criminal institutions who are involved with the financial gain of illicit activity and provide the resources for organized criminal groups to develop. This creates a larger problem being the issue of the drug war only expands through a system we trust to protect us, at the expense of tax payers. As policing strategies increase so do the methods used, in order to reduce risk of serious crimes law enforcement will target minor crimes which result in increase of prison populations and a shift in the ethics and procedures used to maintain a drug free environment. The social costs of policing the drug war can violate human rights, cause racial injustice, and limited

For decades, studies have been done using various empirical techniques employing different disciplinary approaches in an effort to estimate, as accurately as possible, the cost of crime to society. However, with challenges like unreported crimes, inflations and monetary conversion to quantify intangible costs, there are variations between estimates from the different techniques and drawbacks to implementing each of them.[1] Knowing the impact of crime to society is important in order to reaffirm that criminal justice interventions and policies made to mitigate, prevent and reduce crime are really effective. One way to do so is to look at the reduction in the number of attempted as well as committed crimes. However, the number of crimes does not portray the severity of each crime; a murder would be on the same level as theft.[2] Hence, researchers came up with a common metric as an alternative to judge the severity of crime, that is, the monetary costs of crime.[3] In policy-making, comparing the monetary costs of crime before and after a policy is implemented would judge how effective the policy is.

government and private pharmaceutical companies to dominate this industry: from the differentiation between immunization and crue cocaine usage, to the lambasting of communist nations, the United States was successful in creating a model for the world to follow in drug control and dominating the global market of pharmaceuticals. More so, while the United States government created international immunization campaigns, to inoculate people in developing nations, the United States government and private drug companies did not define the legality of drug trafficking for concerns of public safety or health. Finally, the transformation of the illicit and licit definition of drug control did not change as a result of research findings, but as a means for the United States to limit the access other nations had to storing, manufacturing, selling, and trading

Drug trafficking has become an increasingly growing problem in the world today. Illegal drug trade is a worldwide black market consisting of production, distribution, packaging, and sale of illegal substances. Although today’s "War on Drugs" is a modern phenomenon, drug problems have been a common problem throughout history. The market for illegal drugs is massive, when we consider the estimated global drug trade value is worth $321 billion (Vulliamy). The most drug trafficking happens on the border between Mexico and the United States. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon said, “Our neighbor is the largest consumer of drugs in the world. And everybody wants to sell him drugs through our door and our window”

In my research I was surprise to learn that an increase in the international drug trade and drug user estimated 14.8 million Americans were illegal drug users as of 1999. I also read that the international drug trade generates $200 to $300 billion dollars a year. And due to a great amount of budget that is spent, this gives the drug trafficker an advantage over the government that has a small budget. Illegal drugs are considered to be a major source of funding for organized crime. The Canadian government has attempted to address these problems by implementing a national drug strategy, which is meant to reduce the demand for and the supply of illicit drugs. Eleven federal government departments and agencies have spent approximately $500 million annually in addressing the illegal use of drugs. In order to optimize the effectiveness of such governmental initiatives and expenditures, it is useful to achieve greater understanding of major trends relating to drug offences. This information will assist policy makers and criminal justice professionals in deterring

People have been using drugs since the beginning of time; yet, their use has been proclaimed illegal for the last hundred years. The ban on illegal drugs has become one of the most controversial and debated issues. A century of prohibition has proven that the drug use cannot be eradicated altogether and that society should search for a new solution. The drugs are an unfortunate part of our reality, and a proper and more compassionate view on addicts must be devised.There are many arguments that support the notion of the drug legalization, and they should be closely inspected.

Drug addiction continues to be a major social problem in any country. Despite all efforts of trying to control the manufacturing and trading of these illicit substances, drug traders still somehow find a way to continuously distribute these drugs around and destroy thousands of lives through various clandestine laboratories that have sprouted from different parts of the world.