Going back, the first laws pertaining to the illegalization of drugs started on a state and local level rather than federal. Anti-drug laws have been established in the United States with the earliest one dating back to an ordinance passed by San Francisco in 1875 against the use of opium dens (Fisher, 2014). Over the past 40 years, The War on Drugs is a phrase commonly associated with the United States government effort to eradicate the use and distribution of drugs by means of legislation and law enforcement. In 1971, president Nixon coined the term ‘The War on Drugs’ emphasizing that “America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse” (Woolley, Peters, n.d.). Two years later, President Nixon created the Drug Enforcement
…show more content…
With treating drug abusers as criminals, it changes next to nothing in drug trafficking rates. Alternatively, treating it as a health issue reshapes the approach of law enforcement from jailing the non-violent offenders to giving them a choice of rehabilitation. The cost of jailing and prosecution does little to make up for the high price that goes into the whole process, making it extremely expensive and futile. Alternative strategies exist that can be utilized in the goal of reducing substance abuse, yet, the same constant ineffective policy prevails. The War on Drugs has been present since the late 1800s ascending into today, however, the effectiveness of this endeavor to eliminate drug abuse in the United States can be questionable at best, and a failure at …show more content…
With the DEA (2010) stating that the decriminalization of drugs will expose numerous people to the “horrors” of addiction and jeopardize the lives of many. In fact, independent research by Kilmer et al. (2010) also indicates that legalizing marijuana would fail to reduce its consumption and would instead increase its use by “76 percent” if demand were linear and a drastic “151 percent” increase if demand were to be constant and elastic. Studies like these damage the argument that decriminalizing and legalizing drugs would result in a decline of drug use. Equally important, the ONDCP (2012) says that drug legalization “would fail to control health and safety consequences’,” using the abuse of prescription medication problem in the U.S. as an example, where a drug is “legal, regulated, and taxed” but still causes death from overdose. (Kaufman,
With treating drug abusers as criminals, it changes next to nothing in drug trafficking rates. Alternatively, treating it as a health issue reshapes the approach of law enforcement from jailing the non-violent offenders to giving them a choice of rehabilitation. The cost of jailing and prosecution does little to make up for the high price that goes into the whole process, making it extremely expensive and futile. Alternative strategies exist that can be utilized in the goal of reducing substance abuse, yet, the same constant ineffective policy prevails. The War on Drugs has been present since the late 1800s ascending into today, however, the effectiveness of this endeavor to eliminate drug abuse in the United States can be questionable at best, and a failure at …show more content…
With the DEA (2010) stating that the decriminalization of drugs will expose numerous people to the “horrors” of addiction and jeopardize the lives of many. In fact, independent research by Kilmer et al. (2010) also indicates that legalizing marijuana would fail to reduce its consumption and would instead increase its use by “76 percent” if demand were linear and a drastic “151 percent” increase if demand were to be constant and elastic. Studies like these damage the argument that decriminalizing and legalizing drugs would result in a decline of drug use. Equally important, the ONDCP (2012) says that drug legalization “would fail to control health and safety consequences’,” using the abuse of prescription medication problem in the U.S. as an example, where a drug is “legal, regulated, and taxed” but still causes death from overdose. (Kaufman,