c Bogdan Schak

October 19, 2010

Mr. Mulchrone
Persuasive Paper
The Failure that is the War on Drugs
On the 17th of June in the year of 1971, President Richard Nixon delivered a message to

congress. The message was of good intent; to criminalize drugs, stop addiction, and take harmful

substances and dealers off the streets. The War on Drugs was declared, and nobody could have

predicted the results to come.

The War on Drugs has been a complete and utter catastrophe. Countless amounts of

money, lives, and effort have been wasted on this worthless battle. An unbelievable amount of

violence and crime has emerged from this attack on drugs. As well this war has proven to be

incredibly ineffective and surprisingly causes more bad than good. Finally, as a solution to this

calamity the United States government would have a better chance regulating and taxing illegal

drugs than fighting it off. Different measures must be taken in order to provide a safer nation.

Since the war on drugs began, countless numbers of people have been murdered, because

of the war, not the drugs. This nation has not learned from its mistakes. When Prohibition took

place, did people stop drinking? Absolutely not, because the public wanted alcohol and they

didn¶t care whether it was provided by the stores or the mafia, this created a business

opportunity. In effect this caused the crime and death rates to sky rocket to support the demand,

causing the entire situation to worsen. Mexico has paid the highest price for America¶s War.

25,000 people have been slaughtered in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón hurled the

Mexican Army into the anti-cartel battle (Watson). Cartels and people associated with them

suffer and cause heavy death tolls in order to provide drugs to the U.S.A. Innocent people die in
wars and this one is no exception. Mothers, fathers, children, cousins, sisters, and brothers are all

normal casualties in Mexico when dealing with drug cartels and gangs(Watson). Even in the

United States there are people that have no part in the war and they are slaughtered. One

example of such is Tarika Wilson, a 26 year old mother of six. The police raided her home,

killed the dog, shot and killed Tarika, who was unarmed, on her knees, holding her 14-month-

old son and complying with orders to get down on the floor (her son was shot twice but

survived). The officer was then cleared of any wrong-doing (Drug War Victims).

Since this war has begun good people are being thrown into prison faster than we can

build them. One and a half million people are locked up, that¶s four times as much people than

before this war even started (Elliot) and roughly 60% of these prisoners are there for drug

charges (Schaffer). ³There are an estimated thirty to forty million people who have used illegal

drugs in the last year. If we imprisoned all of them, we would have to build a prison large

enough to hold the combined populations of California, Arizona, and New Mexico. The total

cost to imprison them for five years, including the costs of arrest and prosecution would be

roughly ten to fifteen trillion dollars, or about ten times the total Federal annual budget. This

does not include the related costs to society which would be caused by the imprisonment of

millions of gainfully employed, tax-paying citizens.´ (Schaffer) It costs almost half a million

dollars to put a drug dealer behind bars (Gleason); this money could easily be used to send a few

poverty stricken teenagers to college! Although these dealers are sent to prison, the only thing

arising from this is a job opening.

After four decades, 1$ trillion dollars, and 38 billion nonviolent arrests for the war on drugs,

citizens would expect a less drug dependent nation. Ironically the addiction rate is at 1.3 percent,

the same as it was before this war even started! (Elliott). Our nation ruins lives by criminalizing
people with drugs. Say there is an intellectual young adult who is caught for drug possession. It

goes on his record, he is a known as a criminal, colleges won¶t accept him, employers won¶t hire

him, and a human being filled with potential has been crippled by society for such a minor

offense. America does not understand the big picture, because doing these foolish sorts of things

will eventually harm the country to a large extent. Even shutting down local dealers doesn¶t help

the war, because then a much larger, better-organized operation moves in (Elliot). In addition to

all this, the efforts to stop drugs has even back fired and made things worse. ³The increased

deadly nature of drugs under prohibition led to 15,000 more deaths in 2000 [in the US alone]

than [if] prohibition had not made drugs more dangerous´ (Hari). A good example of this would

be when amphetamines were outlawed, users learned to cook up methamphetamines, which are

far more potent. Cocaine is a water soluble drug that requires special packaging that is difficult

to get past authorities; dealers came up with the derivative crack in smaller, easier-to-hide

"rocks." Those smaller, cheaper portions made it affordable in poor communities. (Elliott) So

why is this war still being fought after such negative and ridiculous outcomes?

People do not understand that throughout human history drugs have always been used

one way or another. Drugs will always be available, because as long as there is a demand on one

side there is a supplier on the other. The United States government needs to learn that if a certain

procedure yields no results after 40 years and a second attempt, it obviously does not work and

something else must be done. Regulating and taxing all drugs remains as the most popular

solution. This plan would result in saving 37$ billion dollars worth of annual spending. This is

only a conservative estimate, which means that the savings would most likely be higher

(Schaffer). Not only will this substantially benefit our country¶s already weak economy, but it

would take the drug profits away from the hands of criminals and into the hands of government
officials. Is it surprising that the Mexican drug cartels support the War on Drugs? It is an

intelligent business plan, because that means that they can continue providing the already over

priced drugs and keep raking in income. If they stopped being the sole contributor of narcotics

then they would lose that money, causing them to weaken as a criminal organization, which as a

result would cause less gang violence and criminal activity. ³Legalize, and you bankrupt most

organized crime overnight´ (Hari).

³All illegal drugs combined kill about 4,500 people per year, or about one percent of the

number killed by alcohol and tobacco. Tobacco kills more people each year than all of the people

killed by all of the illegal drugs in the last century´ (Schaffer). Yet we do not criminalize these

drugs, but we teach the public of their harmful effects and in result we reduced tobacco use in

this country from 42% to 17% (Elliott). Education not criminalization is the answer to this

problem. Not only will these new drugs bring revenue, but they could also be used for medicinal

purposes. Such purposes include medical marijuana on chronic back pain and forms of cancer.

Also opiates such as heroin are a lot safer and easier to use then most drugs used now for similar

treatments.

It is understandable that there is a concern that if narcotics and other drugs were legalized

and decriminalized more people would use them, and they would be much more readily available

for minors. On the contrary this is not the case. On July 1st, 2001 Portugal decriminalized drugs

including heroin and cocaine. People could have as much as they wanted when they wanted, and

if someone was caught, a police officer could recommend treatment, but nothing more. Many

prohibitionists predicted an incredible rise in addiction and use. In contrast, the results were a

lower percentage of people using the drugs. Heroin use fell by 50%, and the money used on

fighting drugs turned into rehabilitation and prescription funding causing drug treatment to
increase by 147%. When Switzerland provided its public a safe place to inject heroin for free,

burglary rates dropped by 60%, homelessness ended, and new user rates fell by 82%. Addicts no

longer needed to push heroin to feed their craving, thus causing the pyramid scheme of heroin to

break (Hari).

The nation needs to learn that you cannot fight addiction and drugs with force. If fire is

fought with fire, then it only leads to a greater fire. Countless amounts of lives have been wasted

and ruined, because of obsolete and senseless regulations. Not only did our government waste a

hulking amount of effort and resources in vain, but they also dug the nation in an even deeper

hole. As the people, we can give our voice and stop these ruthless laws. We can become a nation

of tolerance. We can stop sending sick people to prison. We can cut down addiction, use, and

violence, but we must learn the error in our ways and stop living in the past. We must study the

facts and look upon this situation with logic. Most importantly, we must pave a new path for our

children, a path of drug awareness, acknowledgement, and to not repeat the same mistakes that

we have.
 By: Bogdan Schak

Bibliography

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