War On Drugs Research Paper

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Throughout U.S governmental history, policies have been known to affect the way of life and every aspect.The war on drugs is the longest ongoing war. This topic is a very controversial topic because it deals with a growing body of citizens whose lives have greatly been affected by the United States government drug policies. In order to tackle the problem effectively, we need to look how it relates to economic problems, health issues, the criminal justice system and etc in our communities
In June 1971, Nixon officially declared a “War on Drugs,” stating that drug abuse was “public enemy number one.” A rise in recreational drug use in the 1960s likely led to President Nixon’s focus on targeting substance abuse. According to a 1969 Gallup poll, …show more content…
This agency is responsible for tackling drug use and smuggling in the United States.At the start, the DEA was given 1,470 special agents and a budget of less than $75 million. Today, the agency has nearly 5,000 agents and a budget of $2.03 billion.

The resolution of the war is curtailed by varying opinions and subjective statistical proof. The war which has been a continuing struggle, is the “war on drugs” At the heart of this war, Is this a battle the United States can win? It is likely everyone will agree drugs are harmful, but is it worth all the violence.If drugs weren't illegal and were sold in stores it would be purer and cheaper, there would be fewer overdoses, less crime associated with getting the money to buy drugs, less violence etc. Jimmy Carter once said, “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself” Countries mired by the violence and corruption associated with the drug trade might otherwise be viable trading partners, with the money spent on drug interdiction better spent on other means. Marijuana is almost completely harmless except to young teens. Face the face the drug war is a miserable failure and has caused more death and …show more content…
Today, there are an estimated 33 million people worldwide living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and injecting drug use accounts for approximately one-third of new HIV infections occurring outside sub-Saharan Africa. While the annual number of new infections has been falling since the late 1990s, HIV incidence increased by more than 25 percent in seven countries over this time span, largely as a result of HIV transmission related to intravenous drug use.1 Five of these countries are in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where the war on drugs is being aggressively fought and, as a result, the number of people living with HIV in this part of the world has almost tripled since 2000. Globally, an estimated 16 million people inject illegal drugs, of whom about 3 million, or nearly one in five, are living with HIV.2 The average HIV prevalence among drug injectors in China, the United States of America and the Russian Federation – the three countries with the largest populations of injection drug users – is estimated to be 12 percent, 16 percent, and 37 percent, respectively. While these statistics point to a serious public health emergency, they do not expose the causal role that punitive drug law enforcement measures have played in driving the HIV epidemic within this population. As described below, treating drug use as a criminal offense fuels the HIV
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