Prof. Bates
Political Science
25 April 2015
War on Drugs
From drug wars, to drug cartels, and government control, the war on drugs has been a critical issue throughout the United States. From the early years of the 1970’s to the 1980’s, there has been a major uprise of the use of drugs and narcotics. However, throughout the development of law making and restrictions, there have been numerous amounts of policies that have been placed upon this controversial issue by the government.
From the beginning of time, the war on drugs has sparked an uprise of controversial issues throughout its course of existence. Of course, there has been many policies that have been placed upon this issue; however, as a result there still seems to be no resolvance to this subject …show more content…
Since a majority of America’s population is abusing drugs, the government has made many efforts to prohibit the use of drugs. However, America has spent over billions of dollars, that even critics of the government are disputing that the US should fund drug treatment programs, instead of spending billions of dollars, “attacking the supply of drugs by trying to eradicate Latin America coca fields, halting illegal drug shipments and lock up users like Myers”
(Nasso 18).
The war on drugs has been a controversial issue however the government has made many efforts of the issue of the war on drugs. The government such as, the Bush administration have been conversing to the drug administration (ONDCP) about their efforts of the large spike of drug utilization in America. The administration planned that within the American population
“drug use would be reduced among young people by 25 percent over five years” (Nasso 20).
Within the five years of this designated plan by the Bush administration; it has made an effective outcome as only 19 percent of the American population has been able to successfully be lowered in the time span of 4 years. In 1993 The Bush administration spent from 10 69 million …show more content…
(Vulliamy 34). Another cartel found and discovered by the authorities was the Sinaloa Cartel. A little after the Gulf Cartel was discovered in August of 2008, the Sinaloa
Cartel had a huge operation of 750 men who were captured and arrested for drug possession. The
Sinaloa Cartel was found with “$460 million cash...along with twentyfour thousand pounds of cocaine and twelvehundred pounds of methamphetamine” (Vulliamy 35).
In 1991, there were more prisoners in California convicted for drug offenses, than there were convicted all the crimes combine in 1980. From 19851998 1.8 million of the prison population expanded from 744,000 prisoner, the majority of the prison population is convicted of drug possession, or drug trafficking (Szumski 29). From 19791994 the impact of law enforcement has made efforts to reduce the amount of the American population who use drugs.
In 1990’s for decades, New York’s crime rates risen as the years progressed. However, they took it upon themselves to increase their “police department by 30 %, adding 8,000 officers”
(Szumski 50). New York became less tolerant, as they arrested all drug related situations,