Presidents Drug Policy
The President's National Drug Control Strategy 2004 focuses on threekey areas: the prevention of drug use, providing treatment for drugaddiction, and damaging the economic basis of the drug trade. In thestrategy, the President notes a special role for law enforcement, schooland community. In addition, the arrest of drug dealers is an importantcomponent of the policy. Despite its many positive points, like a focus ontreatment, the President's drug policy has several important flaws.Overall, the President's drug policy will be held to be successful if itholds up to long-term goals like reducing drug use and crime that isassociated with the use of illegal drugs. Law enforcement plays an important role in the President's drugpolicy. Importantly, the policy proposes "close alliances between treatmentand law enforcement" as part of a larger alliance between the community andgovernment. As an example, the policy notes the case of Shirley Morgan andthe growing drug trade in rural Portland near Mount Hood. She headed acommunity group that coupled a volunteer coalition that collectedintelligence on drug activities with the activities of the local police
Personally, I feel that the President's National Drug ControlStrategy 2004 has some fundamental flaws. As stated, the policy doeslittle to provide treatment for those already impacted by drug use, andinstead focuses primarily upon punitive and preventative methods. " School and community are important components of the President's drugpolicy. The DEA iscommitted to prosecuting, disrupting, and arresting Columbian herointrafficking operations, in particular. This coordination plays animportant role in stopping "trafficking organizations can span dozens ofstates and hundreds of jurisdictions. 4 million is marked for the ONDCP-Drug-FreeCommunities Program, a program that is set to fund 100 local communitycoalitions specifically designed to reduce drug use among youth. Further, the drug policy fails to differentiate the social andeconomic costs for drugs like marijuana from the social and economic costsof drugs like heroin and cocaine. Decreases in the number of new drug users would suggest thathis prevention initiatives are working. Several indicators can measure the effectiveness of the President'sdrug policy. Community involvement is mentioned repeatedly throughout thePresident's drug policy. The policy focuses closely on the need to arrest drug dealers andtraffickers, especially those involved in drug smuggling. Perhaps the most importantly, the President's drug policy fails to getat the real root causes of drug use and abuse. It isas if the President thinks that drug use comes out of thin air, as he failsto mention links between drug use and these other social ills. Until theunderlying causes of drug use are addressed, the punitive and preventativemeasures outlined in the policy are likely to be largely ineffective.
Common topics in this essay:
Control Strategy,
Overall President's,
Vicodin Vicoden,
Communities Program,
Columbian Mexican,
Mount Hood,
Media Campaign,
drug policy,
president's drug,
president's drug policy,
Division SOD,
Shirley Morgan,
law enforcement,
policy fails,
policy notes,
President's National,
drug control strategy,
causes drug,
president's national,
drug trade,
national drug control,
arrest drug,
national drug,
drug policy fails,
control strategy 2004,
|