Research Paper draft 2

Fighting without thinking

Wars that causes harm to its own people is a war that should not be fought. The “War on drugs” is the government’s fight to police the "use of illegal drugs and protect the U.S citizens from such drugs. However, the “War on drugs” has been targeting many of the minorities in poor neighborhood. Also, many of the drug users are unfairly treated by the law as they are given an unfair years of jail time compared to other more hateful crimes. Also, funding to continue the “War on drugs” has been spent inappropriately as the number of people using drugs has not decreased. Also, the war on drugs has generated more private prisons allowing them to exploit prisoners. However, there are some victories by the “War on drugs” that has been that some communities feel safer and raised awareness of the dangers of illegal drugs. Ultimately, the “War on drugs” should be stopped or fought in a more efficient manner that is helpful for society overall.

Courtesy of https://www.vox.com/2014/7/1/5850830/war-on-drugs-racist-minorities

The “war on drugs” began in June 17, 1971 by the U.S president Richard Nixon as he led the charge to stop drug abuse by increasing funding for programs to control the circulation of drugs and treat drug addicts. In the article called “War on drugs”, programs that were passed by the U.S congress was the Anti-drug act of 1986, it “established a series of “mandatory minimum” prison sentences for various drug offenses” (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica), which forced a minimum amount of years for the possession of illegal drugs. The “mandatory minimum” prison sentences targeted many people from poor background especially African Americans because many of them possessed cocaine and other drugs. At first it was widely-supported by the public and the media advocated the regulation of the usage of drugs more strictly. There were also movements such as the “Just Say No” campaign, which was a privately funded effort to educate schoolchildren on the dangers of drug use (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica) which was another effort to stop young people from using drugs. However, as time goes by people began to realize sentences sent an abnormal number of African Americans to prison than any other race. In effect, currently the public does not favor the “war on drugs” which led to reforms such as the legalization of marijuana in some states. Overall, the war on drugs is a plan that has long been disapproved by many US citizens.

https://www.vox.com/2014/7/1/5850830/war-on-drugs-racist-minorities

To continue, the war on drugs is targeting minorities and is unfairly treating them. In the article “Everyone does drugs, but only minorities are punished for it” by German Lopez, clearly reveals how minorities are targeted by the US law enforcement. The graph on

the right shows that white and black people have similar rates of the usage of many drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and hallucinogen, and marijuana. However, according to the US drug arrest chart “In 2007, black people were 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for drugs than white people” (Lopez 1). The charts strangely do not correlate because there should be similar rates of arrest for both ethnicities, but there are much larger number of arrests for black people than white people. In the text, “The ACLU found that 62 percent of SWAT raids are used for drug searches, and drug-related SWAT deployments primarily impacted people of color” (Lopez 1) shows that law enforcers are unfairly targeting a specific race even though white communities use as much drugs as black communities. In brief, the “war on drugs” caused black communities to become unfairly targeted by law enforcers for the usage of drugs and they should be equally treated by the law enforcers like any normal US citizen.

Furthermore, the laws against drug users are very harsh and illogicalcal. The article, “Everyone does drugs, but only minorities are punished for it” by German Lopez shows how the law makers in the US government imposes laws that make it easier for minorities to be sent to jail. The chart in the right reveals how these laws are biased as they target black people and protect the white people because “Black people use crack at higher rates than white people, while white people use cocaine at higher rates than black people.” (Lopez 1). Therefore, these biased standards make it easier for law enforcement to arrest and imprison black people more easily. Also, the stark difference these drugs are treated is unreasonable because “Crack and cocaine are pharmacologically identical drugs” (Lopez 1), so they should be managed similarly as well. The governments’ war on drugs is inappropriately handled and is targeting the minorities with unfair mandatory sentences.

Courtesy of https://www.vox.com/2014/7/1/5850830/war-on-drugs-racist-minorities

The mandatory minimum sentences for the usage of drugs has undoubtedly caused an increase in the number of prisoners, and led to the need of more prisons. The article “explains how private owned prison systems have terrible medical care systems. Prisons was always owned by the federal government until the 19th century until the War on Drugs which led to an explosive increase of the number of prisoners. Also, the federal government made illegal immigrants who continued to re-entry the country after numerous warnings would eventually be sent to jail. Because of the increased number of prisoners, the government wanted to cut costs by contracting prisons to private-owned companies. The government would grant these companies a set amount of money where they would use to operate the prisons. However, the companies wanted to profit as well so they did everything they could to lower as much costs such as using lower quality medical facilities. As many of the prison’s health care facilities were filled with undertrained staff who did not have the proper knowledge of skill to treat someone. Therefore, many prisoners were not treated properly in this chaotic and disease stricken environment, leading to many eventual deaths. However, many of these deaths could have been avoided if they were treated properly with the correct personal. These private owned prisons did not save the government as much money either as many of the costs that would have been saved was used to monitor these private owned prisons and try to fix the many problems. To conclude, the government’s intention to cut costs produced a poor-quality prison system with a terrible medical system that killed many prisoners.

Another issue the “war on drugs” has caused is the increase of corrupted private prisons. The article “Corporate America Exploits Prisoners: Inmates Become Assets for Major Companies to Expand Profit Margins” by Wilson Delgreco explains how the war on drugs is causing an increase of the creation of private prisons. The U.S is spending billions of dollars to maintain the police, judges and correction facilities, which made them eventually lean towards making contracts with private prisons to save money. Private owned prisons are taking advantage of prisoners by making them work for cheap labor by paying them only as little as “at a rate of less than 25 cents per hour” which allows them to profit by a huge margin. Even many well-known companies such as Microsoft and Victoria’s Secret are using these prisoners because of the extreme profit they could make. As the minimal pay laws does not cover for prisoners and they even lose many basic human rights like health care insurance or compensations from injuries due to these facilities. In brief, the war on drugs helped private prisons exploit more prisoners to help the “elite” get richer.

The war on drugs is a very controversial topic discussed frequently by the public and even by public officials. In the article, “Marijuana Legalization and Regulation” supports the discrimination of marijuana and looking for other solutions to regulate this drug. Marijuana is a drug that is smoked or consumed as a psychoactive (mind-altering) drug. Drugs are always put down by the government and only advocates the negatives and not the positives of some illegal drugs. To support, the article states that “State and local governments would acquire significant new sources of tax revenue from regulating marijuana sales” which is a long term solution to dissuade users with high taxes on marijuana. To conclude, the government should be looking for more long-term solutions than short term-solutions like mandatory minimum sentences for drug users.

            The war on drugs is a long struggle between the government and the people. The war has many viewpoints and it’s view continually changes as time goes on and how people react and feel about the war on drugs plays a huge factor in that. The war on drugs has caused harm to many minorities by treating them unfairly with anti-drug laws. Also, these anti-drug laws have created a way for private companies to harm these minorities as well by exploiting and mistreating them. However, the government should look for solutions that can benefit the minorities communities while also regulating these drugs in an indirect way. In conclusion, the “War on drugs” should be ended or the government needs to change their ways that does not harm their own people in the process. 

 Citations:

“Drug | Definition of drug in English by Oxford Dictionaries.” Oxford Dictionaries | English, Oxford Dictionaries, en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/drug.

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “War on Drugs.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 19 Aug. 2016, www.britannica.com/topic/war-on-drugs.

Lopez, German. “Everyone does drugs, minorities get punished.” Vox, Vox, 1 July 2014, www.vox.com/2014/7/1/5850830/war-on-drugs-racist-minorities.

“Marijuana | Definition of marijuana in English by Oxford Dictionaries.” Oxford Dictionaries | English, Oxford Dictionaries, en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/marijuana.

“Marijuana Legalization and Regulation.” Drug Policy Alliance, www.drugpolicy.org/issues/marijuana-legalization-and-regulation.