Negative effects of war on drugs in America
War on drugs is an initiative led by the government and was started in the 1970’s by the government of the United States to fight to stop unauthorized drug use, their distribution, and the whole drug trade through increasing and enacting penalties for the drug policies offenders. It’s the longest war existing in America, and since Nixon started the modern war on the drug it has been over 40 years, and yet drugs stopped to flow in American society. The war comes with harmful consequences that destroy many issues that people care about, and they hold so much value on.
The American war on drugs has led to the rise of racial injustices issues Lim, Y. (2018). Although the rates of drug use and drug sales are equal in all races, the African – American is arrested 13 times more than the white people and even 57 times in other states. Again, despite the Latinos and the African- American making 27% of the American population, on the drug arrest rate 75% of drug criminals caged in federal prisons and undergoing drug prosecution is comprised of the two races. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
When one is convicted of a drug offense, they are denied or delayed to obtain Higher Education Financial Aid. Drug abuse offenders are also denied to use public houses, and in over 32 states of America anyone identified as a drug crime is not allowed to collect the government food stamps benefits, and this is just like ensuring that someone doesn’t exist in a country even excommunicating them would be more merciful.
The United States federal government, the local government, and the state spend $50 billion in quest of making the whole America a country that is free from drugs. On a logical sense, this is a wastage of the taxpayers’ dollars, and this budget can be cut down to top up the public universities and colleges budget for better provision of resources and quality education.
The war drug prohibition has resulted in unsafe neighborhoods. Ironically most of the violence related to drugs doesn’t arise from drug use as predicted but from the drug prohibition tension. The mass killing isn’t caused by marijuana, cocaine or any other drug use but by people protecting the drug plants in that they choose to value the drug protection over killing each other mercilessly. The prohibition is feared more than the drug use.
The government law figures are willing to reap off people’s constitutional rights to convict them of drug policy violation. Police break unannounced into homes and treat both the innocent and the guilty citizen in that house like they are all lawbreakers and subject them to the same prosecution process. They shut down private property even without following the right constitutional process and also deny citizens convicted of drug felony their rights to vote and subject them to unnecessary urine tests.
The drug war is the primary cause of the blood path in Latin America. The drug prohibition has not succeeded in curbing the drug supply and drug use, but instead, it has cause killing of more than 60, 000 citizens in Mexico alone due to drug prohibition ( Sandvik, K. B., & Hoelscher, K. (2017). The policies instead of helping to scare drug criminals they have motivated criminals to be more strategized and organized, the government law personnel has become corrupt, and thousands of people are becoming refugees.
The ironical part is that the drug war has failed in keeping away the young people from drug use. Instead, 50% of the youths use Marijuana and 75% drink alcohol even before they graduate from schools. As such, this shows that the young people need to be educated about drug use and be given honest talks about drugs and after that, they are supposed to be left with the responsibility of making their own decisions concerning drugs. Now the drug war calls for them to be arrested and arresting them and throwing them in prisons only causes more harm to them psychologically and even physically more than the drug use can cause.
The government puts criminal justice over any drug caused disease treatment. So this forces one to surrender to be arrested to get any treatment, and this makes humanity sound so pathetic. Morally we shouldn’t force people into cages first so that we can go back and get concerned how fit they are health-wise, but it should happen the other way round.
According to Mott, M. M. (2018), People that have been arrested and are now caged in U.S prisons has grown to more half- a million and this proves that the drug conviction is in the front line of destroying families. Now in the United States, there is either a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, a mother or a family that is not with the family because they are somewhere in prison on drug charges.
As much as we want to list down our critics and make sure that the war on drug leaders realize that they are losing the fight, there are little ways that the war journey has helped shape the United States. For instance, the established DARE programs by the war on drugs have led to many youths being drug informants and also enabled them to be their parent’s monitors.
The war has lessened the occurrence of drug-related crimes. Without the drug drugs that have been enforced the drug deals would be taking place more frequently, and there would be people drinking and smoking, getting hallucinations and getting drug motivation to do certain crimes. Therefore people fearing the policies and penalties that a drug use person can be put under has put a thick line between people and performing of crimes.
The war sudden and unpredicted investigation has worked on disrupting the drugs supply chains. People thinking of being caught by the law enforcers at any time and being put away from many government benefits and facing harsh consequences we can say it has scared some drug dealers away and made them take a different way and save themselves.
War on drugs is helping to create a drug-free society. Everyone now is looking at it as a lost course journey, but it can be attained if everyone in every state was willing to play their part in helping to shut down drug use, supplies and everything that involves drugs. This fight should be left only to the government and expect them not to lose instead it should be a war that the family, the relatives, and every citizen is willing to fight and see it through.
References
Netherland, J., & Hansen, H. (2017). White opioids: Pharmaceutical race and the war on drugs that wasn’t. Bio Societies, 12(2), 217-238.
Sandvik, K. B., & Hoelscher, K. (2017). The Reframing of the War on Drugs as a “Humanitarian Crisis”: Costs, Benefits, and Consequences. Latin American Perspectives, 44(4), 168- 182.
Lim, Y. (2018). Understanding the War on Drugs in America through the Lens of Critical Race Theory. BLR, 156.
Mott, M. M. (2018). Love the Prisoner, Ban the Substance: Pope Francis and the War on Drugs. In Pope Francis as a Global Actor (pp. 81-95). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.