Drug War

Drug war

Every weekend night on Cops, we see "drug crazed" criminals being escorted to the back of police cruisers to be place under arrest. There is neither name nor story behind the person, they are just labeled as criminals and portrayed as bad people. America has the highest percentages of incarceration rates in the world. This was on drugs has slowly become a war on lower class and has placed many people behind bars for minor offenses. This year nearly 300,000 people will be arrested for drug charges, and almost 2,000 will be incarcerated for drug charges. Prison is a harsh environment, but it's even harder for drug addicts and actually the wrong environment. Every person has a story; some will tell a fairy tale and others a nightmare. America's new war on drugs and those who possess them is becoming a legal and culture slaughter imposed on our minorities and lower class Americans. The total amount of money that will be spent on the war on drugs this year is almost $8,100,000,000 and rising every second.

The war on drugs incriminates many more problems that it prevents. In the year 2002, 47.53% of all drugs offender in jail were African American. Prison makes a man's life harder. After prison it is hard to find a job that will accept and ex-con as an employee. It is also hard to get a place to live and security. The recidivism in this country is 60%. Most who got to jail once for drug charges usually get arrested again and end up incarcerated again because they had not been able to make a living outside of prison. This evidence of a flaw in our justice system: we are not rehabilitating these drug offenders but de-socializing them. 1.46 million African American men are not allowed to cote due to convictions and 13% of all adult black men are disenfranchised. Prison is not solving anything. It is focusing on the vulnerability of mostly the African American community. The war on drugs causes more hard than it does good. Ralph Reiland argues that, "Prohibition has increased the level of street violence, expanded health risks for drug users, drained the criminal justice resources away from more serious crimes, diminished civil liberties, restricted the medicinal use of drugs, generated insurrection in drug-producing countries"(1). The war on drugs is just another war America is losing.

People who are categorize as "druggies" should be in rehab, and not punished. It is not there fault that the drugs have taken over and they will do anything to get money for it. Drug addiction is a disease and therefore they should not be prisoners but patients in rehab. Prison is not the right environment for someone who has a drug problem. Instead of locking them up and not helping the "war on drugs" because once he gets out he will be doing the same thing, we should put them into extensive rehabilitation programs. Our society cannot evolve with these drug laws, they create a machine of young black men being shipped away to prison for drug charges. The drug laws are very racist. 74% of all drug charges resulting in incarceration are African Americans. "Race, Prison" Prison is a harsh reality and just imagine being in prisons with a drug problem, it is neither humane nor benefiting the war on drugs.

A lack of equal opportunity and decreasing government aids funds are making the living costs more than ever and many resort to selling drugs to make money. Money being spent on the war on drugs should be donated to inner-city and other inadequate school, providing a better education to put more black men in college instead of prison. Ambitious citizens from ghetto neighborhoods become drug entrepreneurs to chase the objects which are advertised to them on a daily basis. It is not only the rich who desire the expensive cars, clothes and electronics. These objects are advertised to everyone. Charles Derber writes, "After all, for thousands of inner-city youth, crack dealing is the only path to the American Dream" (50). Is this the cause of America's war on drugs? Are we trying to suppress ambitious black men by making crack penalties extreme? A person can go to jail for having a couple grams of cocaine, yet someone can avoid a prison when caught with anything up to a pound of marijuana. This is evidence that our laws are suppressive mainly because of the fact that they were founded on the basis of how much money these drug dealers are making, rather than the severity