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Essay On American War On Drugs

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The American war on drugs has been around ever since June 1971, and today 44 years later it’s still alive and well. However, it’s a shame the majority of us don’t know why the nation is still wasting its time fighting this unjust war on narcotics. Many currently illegal drugs, such as opium, coca, marijuana, and various psychedelics (Mescaline, Ayahuasca) have been used for thousands of years for legitimate medical and spiritual purposes. So why is it that so recently our nation has declared these drugs as sinister? Why are some drugs legal and some others illegal today? The sad truth is that it's not based on any valid scientific assessment of the relative risks of these drugs, but instead historically it has had everything to do with who was associated with these drugs. The facts are that the first anti opium laws in the 1870s were pointed at Chinese immigrants. The principal anti cannabis laws, in the Midwest and the Southwest in the 1910s-20s, were directed at Mexican migrants. The first anti cocaine laws, in the South in the early 1900s, were directed at African American men. Even today Hispanic and especially African American communities are still subject to outrageously disproportionate drug enforcement and sentencing practices. …show more content…
It was because of this that the US government halted scientific research to properly evaluate the efficacy and medical safety of most drugs. Then in June 1971, our president Nixon declared the “war on drugs.” Nixon dramatically increased the presence and size of federal drug control agencies, pushed through measures such as no knock warrants and mandatory sentencing; the end result was the largely unsuccessful drug war that we’re still engaged in today. We’re still wasting massive amounts of money, filling up our prisons, and leaving our addicts untreated all in the name of the war on drugs and it’s time to end

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