Activity 8

"War on Drugs"

On June 17, 1971 President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs". Drug abuse was considered by his administration to be "public enemy number one in the US". This statement alone emphasized the magnitude of the drug issue during this time period. Most recently the number one public enemy has been things such as terrorism so to learn that drug abuse was so severe and problematic that the US President considered it public enemy number one at the time really puts it into perspective.
In order to wage this war on drugs, Nixon established the Drug Enforcing Administration also known as the DEA. In addition to the creation of the DEA, Nixon also announced the creation of the SAODAP, Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention. The Nixon administration's war on drugs pursuit continued with operations such as "Operation Golden Flow" where US military were required to pass a drug test before returning home. This was because heroin abuse oversees was running rampant.
The DEA has been the main result or birthright of President Nixon's war on drugs and his presidency was the only era in the war on drug's history where the majority of funding went to treatment rather than criminalization of drug abusers.
With all that being said I believe thus far this country has not won any war on drugs. In my opinion drug use is a continual issue and no matter the fads with each passing era, drug use with variation in the popular drug types within the time, has not ceased. Therefore, I think this country has "lost" the war so far. I use the term "lost" loosely since that implies it is a permanent result, which isn't the case since I cannot predict the future of drug use in this country. But, so far I believe drug abuse is still a critical issue in this country.
There have been many costs from this war on drugs. Financially speaking, the government has invested an extremely large summation of funds on drug enforcement. Not only does the DEA receive tons of funds to prevent drug abuse in this country, so many other groups and task forces have been allotted tons of government funding to wage this war on drugs such as the ATF and border patrol. Not to mention the task force agents and SWAT teams. In addition to this groups, the increase in technology at borders, to prevent drug control is immense and costly.
In addition to the financial cost of waging a war specifically on drug use in this country, there is also violence to consider. When dealing with the prevention of gangs and cartels pushing drugs, tons of violence is a result with border patrols and drug enforcement agents.
Lastly, the war on drugs has cost many people their lives. I do not mean physical death but instead I mean people having to serve ridiculous time sentences in prison to serve minimum times for drug related crimes; minimum times that were enforced in an effort to fight the war on drugs. For example, during the Reagan administration powder versus crack cocaine had a 100 to 1 ratio and there were people serving longer time sentences for a small amount of crack than there were other criminals who had committed vehement crimes such as rape, as discussed in class.
In conclusion, I believe drug abuse has been a continual and steadfast public enemy of this country, and the US has yet to fully establish a resolution to this problem and solve it justly yet everyday the US seems to be moving towards a better solution to win this war on drugs.