The War On America
The War on Drugs America
It should be no secret that America has a serious and rapidly growing drug problem. According to a study conducted by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), about 12.7 million Americans have used some kind of illegal drug in the past month, and approximately 30 to 40 million people have altered their state of mind at least once in the past year (druglibrary.org). These startling facts should make your average straight-edged American wonder why the US government doesn't do something about this epidemic. The truth of the matter is that, while not directly or intentionally, the government has been a major contributor to the underground drug industry's success over the past three decades.
The first American drug law, which outlawed the smoking of opium in San Francisco, was passed in 1875. Since then, hundreds of state and federal laws have been created to prohibit the creation, use, and distribution of several different "controlled substances." Many of these laws were established after President Richard Nixon, in June of 1971, declared drug abuse to be public enemy number one in the United States. The original purpose for the government's focus on drug abuse was to provide new types of treatment for addicts, rather than to create laws that harshly punished them and, in turn, did nothing more than lower the quality of their lives even further. One good thing that did come about from this war was the creation of methadone treatment for heroin addicts. In 1971, the Nixon administration gave a large amount of money to help increase Dr. Robert Dupont's.methodone treatment program in Washington D.C. In the year after the expansion of Dr. Dupont's program, burglaries in D.C. dropped by an astonishing 41% (pbs.org). Today, methadone is still seen as the most efficient cure for heroin addiction with hundreds of clinics providing treatment worldwide.
Since its inception in the early-seventies, the funding for the War on Drugs has...
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