The war on drugs was initiated by Richard Nixon to target war protesters and black people, according to Richard Nixon’s top aide on domestic policy John Ehrlichman. In an interview with a journalist name Dan Baum, Ehrlichman explained that Nixon believed the White House had two enemies’ anti-war left and black people. He continued to explain, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” This admission is what many people had believed for years and it is scary on how one may use a legitimate concern and oppress people and use it as a political tool to delegitimize groups.
Success reaches a limit in late 90’s. While the war on drugs did have success in lowering the number of user in the 90, it had not address the problem of drugs continuing to enter the country. According to James Stillwell believed that there were tremendous success, but believe that they hit a stalemate. He believes that more attention to treatment is needed. This information came out before the turn of the century and now we have seen an explosion in the use of drugs, in particular heroin. This increase in heroin use has changed people views on drugs users/ addict, they now believe it is a health crisis more than a crime epidemic. This change in view of the drug problem can give hope to many people.
Dangers of the reengagement of the war on drugs. Currently Jeff Sessions our top law enforcement official in DC, is reviewing Obama era policies that help protect people civil rights. He also want to step up the war on drugs. Sessions had appointed Steven Cook a former street cop, “who became a federal prosecutor based in Knoxville, Tenn., saw nothing wrong with how the system worked – not the life sentences for drug charges, not the huge growth of the prison population.”(Washington Post). This should be concerning, those tactics has left communities decimated with mass incarceration. Also these tactics only get low level drug dealers of the streets, where the focus should be on the cartels that produce the drugs and the people who ship the narcotics in. Additionally; the users need to be given treatment for their addiction. Another thing that the government should do in the war on drugs is change the conditions in the environment of were many drug users are. A lot of users live in poor areas and see life through a lens of despair, if we can give more people hope in their future we would see a significant drop in drug use.
In conclusion, we have seen why the war on drugs was developed, which was not a good reason to start this necessary war. It was developed to target people groups who opposed a president. This created a stigma that was not true, drugs in particular hard drugs has damaging effects on people and it does not discriminate against any class of people. The war on drugs should be more focused on how it can destroy communities no matter wat the community looks like.
America’s ‘War on Drugs’ reduces users, but supply keeps coming
http://www.cnn.com/US/9909/09/drug.war/index.html
Top adviser to Richard Nixon admitted that ‘War on Drugs’ was policy tool to go after anti-war protesters and ‘black people’
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/nixon-aide-war-drugs-tool-target-black-people-article-1.2573832
How Jeff Sessions wants to bring back the war on drugs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-jeff-sessions-wants-to-bring-back-the-war-on-drugs/2017/04/08/414ce6be-132b-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html
The war on drugs is a war on people
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/22/opinions/war-on-drugs-michael-k-williams/