Differences Between Nixon And Reagan's War On Drugs

I found the topic of “medical tourism” odd and compelling. It made me wonder why Americans would travel all the way to Mexico for supposedly cheaper healthcare. Either Mexico’s healthcare is extremely cheap or the United States’ healthcare is extremely expensive to justify travelling that far for a dentist appointment and for that to be economically viable. I suspect it’s a mixture of the former and the latter, although honestly the violence between drug cartels in Mexico would make me too nervous to ever travel there. I’m sure many Europeans feel the same way about traveling to the United States when they read up on the country’s gun violence statistics though so I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. I did know that a lot of celebrities …show more content…
Despite the fact that I’ve made it clear that I lose a great deal of respect for someone if they abuse drugs, I still vehemently believe that drug use should be decriminalized in the United States. Nixon and Reagan’s War on Drugs was a well-meaning but miscalculated and ultimately destructive policy that created the modern situation where the United States has the world’s highest prison population by far. Statistics indicate that the number of those incarcerated for non-capital crimes shot up exponentially during the 1980s and 1990s as a direct result of the War on Drugs. Most of the people in the US prison system are serving up to 5 year sentences for drug possession, including marijuana which most medical professionals don’t consider a harmful or addictive drug and is the mostly widely used illegal drug. Drug abusers shouldn’t be roaming the streets or driving where they pose a real hazardous threat to other pedestrians but they definitely shouldn’t be locked up in jail just for experimenting with drugs recreationally either. Maybe instead of the War on Drugs, the government should have pursued a War on Drug Distributors since they’re the ones who commit the violent crimes and have created a multi-billion-dollar black market selling illicit substances to anyone willing to pay, including children. Studies have shown that rehab generally doesn’t have a lasting impact or high success rate of getting drug users clean, but it’s the best solution I can think of currently and it’s far better than locking them up in the same cells with dangerous murderers and rapists. In a way, I agree with the structural functionalists that the increasing drug use in society is largely a response to society’s weakening norms and moral values. Still, in a society where up to 7% of people use illicit drugs on a somewhat regular basis and where a criminal record