A year after the stock market crashed, 1930, and president Hoover is in office, America is in a state of existential crisis and people are looking for answers and distractions. The Treasury Department created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics under Harry J. Anslinger who directed the agency until 1962 “and molded America’s drug policy” (The United States War on Drugs). Anslinger who was also a prohibitionist, who believed progress could only be achieved by controlling each individual’s impulses and thought that if enough people were put in jail that America would rid itself of drugs. Nonetheless, with these same beliefs, Anslinger, used these to fight the war on drugs. Armed with a Depression snug budget, and an uphill battle Anslinger tried and failed to get state governments involved with the war effort.…
The War on Drugs had invested large amounts of money into this policy when the money could have been spent more wisely. When President Nixon had declared the War on Drugs policy, he sought to defeat this enemy by fighting both the supply and demand parties. In doing this, Nixon launched a immense interdiction effort in Mexico also known to come the drug enforcement agency in 1973. That had meant that President Nixon required Mexico to regulate their farmers or people who grew marijuana. In result, this made the United States to spend millions of dollars closing off the borders (Stanford).…
Although Richard Nixon first declared a “war on drugs” in 1971, the war escalated during the Reagan presidency and shifted its focus from treatment toward incarceration and law enforcement. As George Moss and Evan Thomas explain, Reagan came to Washington “committed to waging a war on drugs and bringing the international drug trade under control” in 1981. Thanks to the rise of the Medellin Cartel in Colombia and other cartels in Latin America during the 1980s, illegal drug trade networks flourished, and America became “the world’s major consumer of illicit drugs.” This increased usage of drugs led to many social crises, including heightened urban crime and health problems, which encouraged both the Reagan administration and private groups…
Huxley writes about the usage of drugs to say that drugs should not be used to cope with your emotions, and they come with consequences. The people in the BNW society use soma to cope with their problems. In the book it states, “…felt in her pocket for her soma… Lenina was left to face the horrors of Malpais.” (Huxley 111) The people in the Brave New World society take soma whenever they get a bad feeling like its nothing instead of learning to put up with them. When they do this they are not experiencing all aspects in life such as the hardship life brings. They also don’t know the consequences that taking drugs like soma gives you. This is evident when the book says, ‘”But aren’t you shortening her life by giving her so much?”… “In one sense, yes,” Dr. Shaw admitted.’ (Huxley 154) The people in the Brave New World society, take soma, which is encouraged by the government, to get away from the reality of life and feel happy and/or relaxed. Doing this, by taking soma so often every day, the people in the Brave New World society are actually substantially shortening their lives. Thus, Huxley is trying to say that the usage of drugs will cause you to not experience all of life and can bring death to its users.…
Many young Americans were involved in the Vietnam War, being a major conflict of their time, and was at its peak in the late to mid-sixties. With over half a million American troops in Vietnam, many ventured into drug use to cope with the stresses of war. Drug abuse was on the rise due to the major paradigm shift in social norms, on the battle field, and the home front. Heroin use among servicemen was high, using heroin as a mental and physical crutch is an effective escape from the tension and stresses of war. Many of these men used for extended periods of time, far beyond what would be considered occasional use and well within range of addiction risk. With so much heroin being used, one might assume that we would…
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People website claims that “Today, the US is 5% of the World Population and has 25% of world prisoners.” In fact, the United States of America has the highest incarceration rate than any developed countries in the world. America puts herself to shame to the rest of the world, despite ironically calling her the Land of the Free. The phenomenon of “Prison Industrial Complex” can be traced back to the mid-1970s when the politics around prison had a complete transformation. Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York until 1973 who later served as the vice president under Gerald Ford, advocated for enhanced sentencing for drug dealers as a tactic to attract more voters.…
Today’s society is known as the “Era of Color Blindness.” The war on drugs from the past to the future has not changed according to Michelle Alexander. The previous Jim Crowe law may be eradicated, but the law was brought back into effect by former president Ronald Reagan, known as the “War on Drugs.” The war on drugs that was put into effect by Ronald Reagan was targeted to lower class communities that had a violent crime rate. Focusing on the “Drug War” took light off a pressing issue known as racial caste in America by making harsher punishments for people who used or sold drugs. Even though the focus was in lower class communities it was also just as common in the middle to upper class communities. The “War on Drugs”…
Within contemporary American society, there is a large focus on self pleasure, and being able to stay happy throughout the hardships and struggles of life. Our lives shift in different directions as we change as people, but our end goal is always happiness, whether immediate or requiring investment. Within the shallow society of Brave New World, the people constantly search for pleasure and release, much like our own world. However, they are heavily inclined by the government to search for the short-term solution to curing their desire for pleasure. Through Brave New World, Aldous Huxley provides a relevant warning about a society focused purely on short term pleasure solutions, whether sexually driven, or driven by drugs, and the extensive…
soldiers. Before the war, 30% of soldiers had tried a drug other than marijuana, 11% had tried an opiate, but no one during that time had tried heroin, until the war. In fact, the only kind of drugs soldiers were taking were amphetamines, that were given to them by doctors, in order to stay alert throughout the day. However, in 1969, heroin started to arrive, infiltrating American culture due to its purity, price, and availability. After the introduction of heroin, a 1971 survey unveiled that about 15% of all soldiers were addicted to heroin, shocking the nation. In order to combat all of the social problems, President Nixon had to come up with a solution. Nixon consulted with a man named Dr. Jerome H Jaffe, who then developed a national strategy. Dr. Jaffe recommended a radical change in policy for handling soldiers addicted to heroin. Under the supervision of Dr. Jaffe, Nixon introduced urine tests and treatment for entering and the current military. This plan was put into place on June 17th, 171, only six weeks after the plan's initial proposal. In addition of this, Nixon formed the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP) in that same month. The action showed during this time by government officials was a step in the right direction from what used to be the protocol before these new regulations were put into place.…
The history associated with drug criminalization in America contains more political motivators than concerns for public health and safety. The biggest politically motivated aspect to drug deterrence comes from Richard Nixon’s s war on drugs in 1971 which has created a system that discriminates against minority groups and has had little effect on deterring drug use. The war on drugs has thus far been notoriously noted for discriminating against people of color by pumping drugs into their communities and then imposing severe criminal consequences for drug possession, use, or distribution. In fact, one of Nixon’s aides John Ehrlichmen stated that the war on drugs was intended for the following:…
The drug war,created by Nixon in June 1971 created many devastating consequences around the world, including the breaking of families,the skyrocketing of crime rate,and of course some of the worst people in history getting into power.One of the biggest supporter of the drug war Rodrigo Duterte was born into a religious household and the violent city of Davao.Some of the people had nothing but hatred and the people who supported him they has been had,them have been smudged. He was called a monster,liar,and a murder but,now we might another Hitler or another Stalin in the form of Duterte.Men become what his past led him to and he now is another one of the mass killer,but he can possibly become another record breaking killer.…
The 1960s drug use were characterized as “youthful rebellion.”It gained the attention of the President Nixon and therefore he established the D.E.A. through executive order and declared the war on drugs shortly thereafter. During the 1970s the D.E.A. focused most of its efforts on other drugs due to an assessment on the extent of drug abuse in the United States and it read,…
Georgie and FH are completely blinded by how drugs are.affecting them. At some point, FH mistakes a drive-in for a cemetery, he thought the speakers were military tombstones, until Georgie points out that he is mistaken. This shows how society was unaware of what was truly happening in Vietnam, until it was no longer deniable. In a sense the American people were blind, they failed to see how being in the Vietnam War would bring bad outcomes. The tombstones that FH saw represent the many lives that was lost during the Vietnam War. The fact that FH did not acknowledge how bad his drug addiction was, is a representation of how society did not realize how deep in the war they were in. The longer FH takes drugs, the harder it will be to stop being a drug user. This applies to how the President kept the U.S in War, the longer we stayed the harder it became to retreat.…
Drug use by the soldiers in the Vietnam War was very common. Drug use in the military has always been around, but in the Vietnam era it started to increase at an alarming rate. It is noted that there were many drugs used and abused during this time. These drugs include marijuana, cocaine, and heroine. Soldiers often used these drugs to kill the pain of many hardships such as injury during battle, loss of a fellow soldier or being away from home. Marijuana is legally considered a drug according to the federal Controlled Substances Act; however the use of it was treated differently from other drugs by American soldiers and military lawyers in Vietnam. (Brush)…
The war on drugs was signed by former President Nixon with the intention of finding people who…