President Richard Nixon And The War On Drugs

They wanted to see it come to an end because they saw it a great public enemy. The United States president Richard Nixon in 1971 declared drug abuse a number one public enemy during his message to the Congress on dug abuse control and

President Richard Nixon invaded Cambodia after saying he would bring peace to southeast Asia. He went back on his word when he decided to do just that. He said in his speech that he wanted to drive out the Vietnamese forces and destroy their supplies in hopes of stopping the war from expanding. He also said that this is the future of 18 million in south vietnam and 7 million in cambodia.

Due to the unprecedented expansion of the war on drugs by the Reagan administration started a long period of skyrocketing rates of incarceration. The huge number of offenders incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenders increased from 50,000 to 1980 to over 400,000 by the year 1997. In 1981, Nancy Reagan began a highly publicized antidrug campaign called “Just Say No”, as public concerns arose due to the portrayals by the media about people addicted to a smoke-able form of cocaine dubbed as “crack”. This campaign set the stage for zero tolerance policies implemented in the late 1980’s.

Bachman and Kenneth E. Sharpe thoroughly analyze the possible ripple effects that could potentially come from the War on Drugs. Written in 1990, they had not yet seen the full effect of the War on Drugs, as it was still relatively new. However, because there were so many indicators of what may come, their predictions remained valid. Bachman and Sharpe portrayed the War on Drugs as threat to American people and fundamentals, for it would only do more harm than good and violate many aspects of the constitution. In their examination of the War on Drugs, they had different sections of points that the reader could differentiate between, filling their paragraphs with plenty of facts, statistics and quotes.

To build support for this war Reagan made sure to publicize this all over the media. It was a grand success. Images of “crack dealers” and “crack babies” were seen all over the news. These images of the purposed inner city life of people of color led to the war that is now known as the War on Drugs. In just a mere thirty years the incarceration population increased from 300,000 to 2 million.

The Nixon administration declared that drugs were the country's "public enemy. " These illegal drugs were implemented in poor communities where minorities reside, so mass incarceration began. Throughout the 70s and 80s, the government spent millions to crack down on drug dealers and those doing drugs. This led to many Americans being imprisoned for simply possessing a drug, specifically marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. The majority of those Americans were minority men, which caused many of their families to be torn apart.

During the Conservative era of the 1980’s President Ronald Reagan had multiple issues to deal with during his two terms, both foreign and domestic. The obvious cloud hanging over every president at that time was the threat of The Soviet Union and communism. Reagan’s presidency saw him take numerous measures to solidify America as the stronger of the two and democracy as the best form of government. On the home front, there were numerous issues to deal with as well. The main concerns he had to deal with were public health and safety issues such as the HIV and AIDS, the protests of the homosexual community, and the cocaine epidemic.

The steep increase in incarceration rates during these years coincides with the Reagan administration’s enhancement of Nixon’s War on Drugs through the Anti- Drug Abuse Act of 1986. One key part of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act is the mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drugs offenses including discrepancies in sentencing between cocaine and crack cocaine. The version of the Anti Drug Abuse Act passed in 1988 provided monetary incentives for police agencies to implement the war on drugs through the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program (Byrne Program). These Byrne Program grants, along with civil forfeiture laws passed in 1984 that allowed police agencies to share in drug related assets, provided substantial resources and motivation for state and local law enforcement to focus on the drug

Furthermore, several acts were enacted to regulate the use of specific drugs as well as the federal prohibition of alcohol. But in 1933, Prohibition ended, making it legal to consume alcohol again. In the 1970’s, drugs were categorized based on their “potential for abuse” (Levinthal, 2016). Unfortunately, many of the illicit drugs are manufactured outside of the United States.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon, in response to the drug use coupled with the hippie counterculture of the late 1960s, signed the Controlled Substance Act (CSA) which enacted a method of classifying drugs by categorizing them into five schedules, schedule one considered to be the most dangerous. Shortly following this act, in June of 1971, Nixon declared “The War On Drugs”, famously naming drugs and drug abuse “Public enemy number one”. (History.com, 2016). Following Nixon’s presidency, many presidents and administrations, including Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, have continued the support for The War on Drugs, but where are the results? It seems today that the abuse of drugs is worse than ever before.

My home state of Minnesota is currently dealing with what Richard Nixon states was “public enemy number one”, and this is a drug crisis, in particular an opioid crisis that has taken the lives of 395 Minnesotans just in 2016. What is the current government doing to help solve this problem? They declared it a national public health crisis but other than that they have pushed for stricter drug control like Nixon did back during his presidency. Nixon started the war on drugs to help him win his presidential campaign and it has been something that has had negative effects to Americans ever since. The War On Drugs has been a failure to the American people through its adverse effect on African American communities, its establishment of unjust mandatory

Essentially, the war on drugs has demonstrated to be an exorbitant expense. The federal government in 2002 alone spent $18.822 billion in the form of expenditures such as treatment, prevention, and domestic law enforcement (CSDP, 2007, p. 54). However, given that the drug war has garnered meager results, this investment may be interpreted as a waste of taxpayer dollars. Alternatively, the money that has been allocated to arrest and detain drug offenders may also be a source of contention. CSDP (2007) “Of the 1,846,351 arrests for drug law violations in 2005, 81.7% (1,508,469) were for possession of a controlled substance.

Since President Nixon began his war on drugs in 1971, there have been 45 million arrests and have spent billions of dollars in the fight against public enemy number one in the United States: consumption and drug trafficking. However, drugs are becoming cheaper and pure and access to them ever easier. Under President Nixon emphasized treating addicts, but, over the years, the focus has been on criminalizing consumers, and created a system that measures the police efficiency, rewards and amounts depending on the number of arrests. The documentary "The House I Live I" is an accurate portrait of the American judicial system intricate in its relentless fight against drug trafficking, which has resulted in violations of human rights and individual

The use of narcotics like cocaine, claimed many lives and earned widespread coverage by media and news. Following this Nancy Reagan began the “War on Drugs”, a campaign to combat pre-existing drug usage and prevent future

Some may not be too familiar with the war on drugs and the effects it has had on the society we live in. The war on drugs was started by the Nixon administration in the early seventies. Nixon deemed drug abuse “public enemy number one”. This was the commencement of the war on drugs, this war has lasted to this day and has been a failure. On average 26 million people use opioids.