War on Drugs is a Dismal Failure Essays -- Argumentative Persuasive To

With a bipartisan vote of 263-146, the House recently approved a bill that included $1.7 billion to combat the dose cartels of Columbia with additional military aid. In doing so, they perpetuated what could be one of the get together States most misguided policies of recent history. At least some Republi moves can give themselves a pat on the back for attempting to remove the Columbian aid from the $13 billion foreign aid bill. Unfortunately, todays drug warfare is largely a Reagan-era Republican creation, so intoxicating that even the huge majority of liberals mindlessly defend it. Regardless, both parties no everywherewhelmingly champ the war on drugs, leaving its opponents a mix of unlikely allies, from Nobel laureate and economist Milton Friedman and conservative writer William F. Buckley Jr., to pothead hippies and the ACLU. Begun by the Nixon administration, the initial death of the drug war was interdiction oriented, as financial support was effrontery to Latin Am erican leaders that pledged to fight drug manufacturing. The Reagan days witnessed a drastic escalation of the war, as so-called drug czars were appointed to get over with the problem firmly. Though Clinton indicated in early 1992 that he would be uncoerced to consider other solutions to the drug problem, once elected he simply continued the policy of previous Republican administrations. The result in the 90s over $30 billion was spent each year at the local and federal level to fight the war on drugs.1 Street disgust and corruption has grown out of control, and prisons are so far over capacity that the majority of drug arrests go unprosecuted. Civil liberties have been jeopardized, discourse programs are under funded, and drug use has been increasing. ... ...Works Cited 1 Drugs and Crime Facts 1994 capital of the United States DC Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995. 2 Eldregde, Dirk, Ending the war on Drugs Bridge Works Publishing, New York, 1998. (All other uncited statis tics are also from this source) 3 1999 Statistical Abstract of the United States-table 152. 4 Schaffer Library of Drug Policy, excerpted from US Department of Justice Report to Congress on the Activities and Operations of the world Integrity Section 5 Grinspoon L, Bakalar JB, The war on drugs - a field pansy proposal The New England Journal of Medicine, February 3, 1994, Vol. 330, No. 5 6 US Department of Justice Drugs, Crime, and the Justice System, 1992 7 Blendon, ScD, and John T. Young, MPhil, The Public and the War on Illicit Drugs, Journal of the American Medical Association, March 18, 1998, vol. 279, no. 11, p. 827