War On Drugs Research

Improved Essays
A system that was build to “protect ad serve” took on the experiment of the war on drugs in 1968 when the Nixon administration decided to redouble efforts against the sale, distribution, and consumption of illicit drugs in the United States (Moore, L. D., & Elkavich, A. 2008). The war on drugs has giving the US a run for there money with the enormous growth in the prison system (Race and the War on Drugs, 2007). In any war in the world there’s always an intended target when the drug laws were enacted, their targets were drug king pins (Race and the War on Drugs, 2007). But over the past quarter century drug arrest have tripled, and almost half a million women are behind bars for drug-related offenses (CITE), which means the women population in state and federal prions has been growing due to the War on Drugs (Cite). This paper will focus on what the war on drugs policy was about. The growing populations of women in prions due to the drug policy, as well as the harsh offenses/ sentencing minority women received. Among the most major costs of the war on drugs are its results on the criminal justice system (Ryan, K. …show more content…
F. (1994). the moral disaster created by and fueling the war on drugs produced a vast body of new state and federal laws in the 1980’s (Ryan, K. F. (1994). Substances that were legal like (PCP, MDMA) or decriminalized (marijuana in some states) were either criminalized or recriminalized and sentences were toughened in an attempt to deter drug use and drug distribution (CITE). Rockefeller drug law is one of the most famous and harsh drug laws in the United States (Mazza, C. 2004). Those convicted of either selling two ounces or processing four ounces of narcotics’ drugs are sentenced to prions or a mandatory minimum of fifteen years to life, That’s equal to someone raping and killing a victim (Mazza, C. 2004). The Bush Administration drug war expenditures rose from $4.5 billion in 1988 to $13 billion in 1993. As McCoy and Block report, between 1977 and 1988 the number of annual drug arrests doubled, from 569,000 to 1,155,000, virtually crippling many urban court systems (CITE). Much of the enormous increase in the size of correctional populations can be directly attributed to the effects of the drug war (CITE). McCoy and Block cite evidence that by 1988 more than a third of the 44,000 federal prisoners were drug offenders(CITE). David J. Rothman (1994) has estimated that nearly 60 percent of the federal prison population today is confined for drug offenses and that, nationwide, 1 out of every 4 inmates in jail or prison is there for a drug offense, compared with 1 out of 11 in 1983(CITE). Drug offenders make up 22 percent of inmates in state prisons, up from 6 percent (Rothman, 1994)(CITE). Nationwide, an estimated 400,000 people are now in jails and state and federal prions on drug charges- one-quarter of all the incarcerated people in the United States (Mauer, 1999) (Mazza, C. 2004). In over half of the states, the incarceration rate for people convicted of drug offenses exceeds the rate of those convicted of violent crimes (Mazza, C. 2004). Even thought the War on Drugs was for men who sold drugs or was apart of the drug organization, women who just happen to be associated

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    Reagan ranted and raved about the War on Drugs, started the ridiculously ineffective “Just Say No” campaign, and significantly increased the budgets of many federal law enforcement agencies; it was pure hypocrisy (73). The populations of jails and prisons increased exponentially all across the country, becoming incredibly overcrowded. The War on Drugs makes it nearly impossible for people like Susan Burton and the many women she has helped to break the cycle. A profoundly flawed criminal justice system, systemic racism, redlining, education policy, and poverty are surely all to blame (8). It is a system that survives on a culture of power, a system that runs on the “idea that punishment was always the answer and was always deserved, that getting tough would solve everything” (123).…

    • 2110 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    One interesting piece of legislation that the author discussed was that of the Rockefeller Drug Laws of 1973. The penalties put in place because of these drug laws are far more excessive than that of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. The Rockefeller laws required a sentence of 15 years to life for any person convicted of selling two ounces or possessing four ounces of a narcotic, regardless of circumstances or prior history (Law, 2012). The author reveals outrageous statistics that followed the creation of the Rockefeller Drug Laws and similar laws that other states had passed in the years following. With these drug sentencing laws in place the number of women imprisoned nationwide for drug offenses rose 888% from 1986 to 1996 (Law, 2012).…

    • 2149 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In, Unequal Under Law: Race in The War On Drugs, Doris Marie Provine provides a series of examples to validate her assertions regarding the relationship between race and the war on drugs. She utilizes events from the past and other methods to justify her claim, that “ . . . racism and fear of a restive underclass explain the persistence of the American war on drugs . . .”(p.7) Provine blames the media, law enforcement, and legislature for an approach that undoubtedly affects African Americans more than any other race.…

    • 1285 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Summary Of Drug Crazy

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The very mention of drugs summons demonic images: needles, babies addicted at birth, violence. No issue generates such a visceral reaction in people like the topic of drugs. In Mike Gray’s book “Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out,” his analysis of the drug war in America explores the mass hysteria surrounding addiction that was nourished with misinformation. Based on the history Gray has compiled, coupled with modern studies, the drug war appears to be a lost cause, now and into the foreseeable future. In 1909, Dr. Hamilton Wright was appointed as the third U.S delegate to the International Opium Commission at Shanghai and became “personally responsible for shaping the international narcotics laws as we know them today.”…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The majority of policies prior to 1970 were related to a more broad approach of controlling the sale and use of illicit drugs, and the policies wavered between many types. The current war on drugs has evolved from a history of prohibition style legislation that was usually targeted towards a specific sector of illegal drug use. Initially, illicit drugs, such as cocaine, were held in high regards for the perceptions of their use as medicinal supplements and treatments (DuPont and Voth, 1995, p. 461). It was only in the early nineteenth century that the public perception began to change to see drug use as detrimental to the health of society, and began to push on the government to control it.…

    • 624 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As she looked farther into the claim that, “The war on drugs is the new Jim Crow” (Alexander 3) , she realized that she had been greatly mistaken. In 1982, president regain called for a war on drugs, declaring illegal drugs public enemy number one. A declaration that would seem strange since during that period drug use was on the decline and most of the public did not view drugs as an important issue. The author sees this as being a war solely on the black community stating, “ by waging a war on drug users and dealers, Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the racially defined “others” - the undeserving” (49). Following the war on drugs, crack cocaine made its way onto the streets right around the same time as job opportunities among inner-city residents decreased.…

    • 1004 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In his article, “4 Reasons Why Ending the War On Drugs Would Be a Huge Mistake,” from Mic. doctoral student at the University of Rochester, James Banks, argues that decriminalizing drugs would cause even more problems in the United States. Banks reports that the U.S. spends an already exponential…

    • 1465 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Kingpin Dispensing

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The War on Drugs is premised upon hypocrisy and corruption and has led to almost one million imprisoned Americans since its inception. The 7.2 million children with parents in prison are the legacy of the war on drugs. In addition to the 13 million African American babies murdered through abortion since…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Disparities In Prisons

    • 537 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Of course, this astronomical spike in prison populations across the US did not come without a laundry list of implications. Among the most notable, the real problem amongst prison populations and their racial makeup. Critics of the “War on Drugs” staunchly protested the increasingly apparent racial disparities as these in fact were the groups so greatly affected by the agenda. For example, throughout the same time frame, African American women had experienced significant effects of the new legislation given that their number of incarcerated for drug offenses increased by 828 percent—which consequently was double the increase compared to African American men and triple the increase among white females (Hutton, 19). Although remanence of protest pulsated across the US in waves of calls of injustice, the legislation remained widely popular among the majority of…

    • 537 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the 1980s and 1990s political figures across America declared a “war on drugs”. During this time period Americans believed that the nation’s number one problem was drug abuse. The crack cocaine epidemic was in full effect during this time, and the main users were young poor African Americans. As the war on drugs gained popularity, policing agencies arrested more and more users resulting in increasing incarceration rates. The “war on drugs” resulted in locking drug users up to keep them off of the streets instead of assisting the users in turning their lives around.…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Since the declaration of the war on drugs in America during the 1970s, incredible growth has been seen in prison population, as stated above with 700 percent increase in prisoners in our country. Even during 1982 when President Reagan officially called for a war on drugs, drug crime was on the decline. Many people think that the decision was based upon the introduction of crack cocaine and its extensive popularity in inner cities, although in reality the crack epidemic came after Reagans announcement of the “war.” Early on in the ordeal, there was a minimum sentencing placed on people who possessed drugs, punishing not a crime but a disease: addiction. Even after the initial hysteria caused by the war on drugs, some cases can result in a drug sentence longer than that of murderers and rapists.…

    • 940 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Satire On Drugs

    • 1595 Words
    • 7 Pages

    We need to emphasize our focus on shifting our funding primacies from interdiction and prosecution of offenders and illegal drugs to a better- balanced approach that is more practical and preemptive. Since the 1980s, our Nation’s Policy makers have positioned principal importance on the role of our law enforcement in our National Drug Control Strategy. Our Federal Courts have been flooded with drug cases. And a majority of the budget allocated for anti-drug ingenuities has been selected for law enforcement and interdiction, while only a small portion has actually been dedicated to demand-reduction procedures such as education, prevention, and treatment.…

    • 1595 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    War On Drugs Effects

    • 1275 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The War on Drugs directly impacts the life of almost every American. The program began as a fight against drug abuse and the spread of dangerous operations including and related to drug trafficking into American cities. Each new president, for the most part, has continued the programs of their predecessors. The naissance of the government’s anti-drug program began under the presidency of Richard Nixon. He set the ball in motion by classifying marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug and by directing his government agencies to target black social activists.…

    • 1275 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    War On Drugs Failed

    • 2360 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The American war on drugs has been a problem since it began in the late 19th century. This so called “war” has been an embarrassment and a failure to the American nation. The war on drugs uses an excess of tax dollars, violates state and individual liberties, and is causing a speedy and frightening deterioration of the Constitution…

    • 2360 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The drug market is stronger than ever, yet the drug war has been in full force for several decades. The effects here in the United States, are quite similar to the effects internationally, but there are many solutions other than a drug war, to stop the use of drugs. Nobel laureate and economist Milton Friedman remarked on the issue, “However much harm drugs do to those who use them…seeking to prohibit their use does even more harm both to users of drugs and to the rest of us…Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and improve law enforcement. It is hard to conceive of any other single measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order” (Donohue 146). Friedman is right.…

    • 1405 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays