The Ongoing Battle with Drugs

Have we lost the War on Drugs? The War on Drugs officially started in 1972 with President Nixon declaring that drug law enforcement was not strict enough. To enforce the laws of the original Harrison Act, a new and intensified plan was to be enacted. The war reached its peak during the Reagan and Bush administrations, in which $67 billion was spent in enforcement of drug laws. The plan had worked relatively well until near the end of the Bush administration and drug use overall was down. But the Clinton administration has not been as effective and it is time to determine what our next course of action will be regarding drug enforcement. Prisons are becoming increasingly overcrowded and many people are being labeled as “hard criminals” as a result of experimentation with soft drugs. There are many possible courses of action to take, but the best one is not very clear-cut. America has always had a tremendous demand for illegal drugs. And simple economic principles will show that when there is a large demand for a product someone will supply it. It is just like any other precious commodity and follows the same theory of “buy low, sell high”. Foreign sources have historically supplied this great demand. Latin America’s drug

"In 1996, 71 of all wire taps were authorized for state and federal narcotics enforcement. One of the biggest problems in drug prevention strategies has been the failure to innovate. Marijuana, Methamphetamines, and LSD are becoming more popular and can be produced in America as well as foreign countries. This law has been the source of many legal battles and led people to accuse the government of unlawfully confiscating their property and in many cases the people that lost property may not even be charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one (Bauman 34). And they refuse to see that the war has been lost. lords have always been a very big problem for the United States. But unlike his predecessors Ronald Reagan and George Bush, he did not attain nearly the results that they did. But now we have a greater problem than stopping imports, we must stop domestic production as well. Many more people are being convicted of drug related crimes, which seems like the policies are working but this is not necessarily the case. As 1984 continued more and more legislation was sent through congress. The penalties for possessing "crack" cocaine are much stiffer than for powder cocaine, even though the two substances are chemically identical. " And he said, "winning the war against drug abuse is one of the most important, the most urgent issues confronting us today" (NBC News). They passed the Aviation Drug-Trafficking Control Act.