In 1968, when American soldiers came home from the Vietnam war addicted to heroin, President Richard Nixon initiated the War on Drugs. More than a decade later, President Ronald Reagan launches the South Florida Drug Task force, headed by then Vice-President George Bush, in response to the city of Miami’s demand for help. In 1981, Miami was the financial and import central for cocaine and Marijuana. Thanks to the task force, drug arrests went up by 27%, and drug seizures went up by 50%. With that, the need for prosecutors and judges also rose which helped boost our economy (Thirty Years of America’s Drug War). Despite these increased arrests and seizures, marijuana and cocaine still poured into south Florida. At this stage, the root of the problem was the Columbian Cartels, and they weren't attacked; the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) soon realized that they needed to suppress the cartels. In 1982, the DEA went to Columbia to eradicate fields of marijuana and coca plants; these fields were located and burned. The hard part now, was finding the labs used to turn the coca leaves into cocaine. These labs were in very remote locations, to avoid any surveillance. On March 10,1984 the DEA finally was able to track down the chemicals used to process cocaine in one of the labs, they seized twelve tons of cocaine; it was the DEA’s biggest take down yet. Despite the DEA’s hard word and efforts the availability of cocaine on American streets remained the same. The Cartel leaders had money, and began to acquire power; they even run for political office and won. Drug dollars poured into Columbia, and there was nothing the DEA could do (Lee, Brianna). “War on Drugs” is a term commonly applied to a controversial campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, and the stated aim to define and reduce the illegal drug trade (Levine, Harry Ph.D.). A “drug-free world,” which the United Nations describes as a realistic goal , is no more attainable than an “alcohol free world.” In which no one has talked about with a straight face since the repeal of the Prohibition in the United States in 1933 (Nadelmann). This a logical statement when looking at the war on drugs in general; it is a never-ending battle, people against the government. This war is not only continuous as it has been going on for nearly 40 years, but it also harms people, costs imaginable amounts of money, and imprisons many people even on the smallest amount of the charge. This all shows that the war on drugs is not worth the fight, nor the tax payers money. First, the war on drugs harms many innocent people. A story that shows how this war does more harm than good is best told in an article from USA Today written by Chris Hawley: Morelia Mexico. Angelica Bucio knows firsthand the mounting problems of President Felipe Calderon’s nationwide war on drugs. She was among the thousands of of revolters packed into this colonial city to celebrate Mexican Independence Day when two grenades exploded. The blast slammed Bucio against a fountain. Her arms and legs were struck by shrapnel which are small metal pieces that scattered outward from the bomb. There was smoke, people screaming and blood everywhere. The September 15th attack which killed eight people and injured 108, demonstrates that Calderon’s battle against drug cartels is still a struggle after nearly two years. Instead of subsiding, drug related murders are rising (Hawley). This may seem in some ways to support the war on drugs because innocent people are being killed due to the drug cartels; this is also the only one person’s point of view. This does the opposite though, it shows that if governments would to quit trying to fight the drug cartels this sort of violence would diminish. However, this leads to an argument about marijuana legalization and will it help cripple the mexican cartels. If the government stopped fighting the cartels to diminish violence, they can counteract by legalizing marijuana taking away a portion of the drug money profits. On January 1st, Colorado made history by becoming the first American state were marijuana can be purchased for recreational purposes, and in which marijuana is regulated from the seed to the actual sale of the product (Marijuana Legalization Will Hurt Mexican Cartels, but How Much?). As attitudes in America begin to shift in favor of outright legalization, it increasingly seems possible that more and more states, and eventually the rest of the country might follow. Given the nature of the illegal drug businesses, this might make illegal drug trafficking a commodity. At times, the Office of National Drug Policy has said that as much as 60% of cartel profits come from the production and sale of marijuana. On the other hand, a 2010 RAND study (International Programs and Drug Policy Research Center) estimated the percentage to be between 15 and 26 percent. More recently, research by the Mexican Institute of Competitiveness released in October 2012 suggests that if only Washington, Colorado and Oregon legalized marijuana, than cartel profits would fall as much as 30 percent. Another variable which must be taken into account when analyzing the impact of legalization on the cartels is the nature of the organizations themselves. All of Mexico's criminal groups have a range of diverse business interests aside from marijuana, and most are considered poly-drug organizations, which make huge profits from methamphetamine, cocaine and other drugs. Some cartels, including the notorious Zetas, have gone beyond trafficking; illicit goods and are now involved in prostitution, migrant smuggling, extortion, human trafficking, counterfeiting and oil theft (The Time is Now). On its own, legalization would not be able to bring an end to the activities of these groups, but legalization would have a definite financial impact. By some accounts, legalization in Colorado kept $5 million from the hands of criminals the first week, much of which, if the US government is to be believed, would have gone to Mexican traffickers. Much of the power of cartels in Mexico stems from their ability to corrupt local authorities and buy protection. Whatever the precise figure, any legislation that disrupts the flow of money into cartel’s strongbox, benefits the Mexican government by allowing it to focus their resources elsewhere. Then there’s the unimaginable amount of money it costs to fight the war on drugs. According to Patrick Gallahue, enforcing the drug control system costs at least $100 billion dollars a year. Federal spending in the United States alone totals around $15 billion annually and according to one estimate, state and local drug-related criminal justice expenditures amount to $25.7 billion (Gallahue, Par. 1).These figures are revealed in a new Count the Costs Briefing —a collaborative project tallying the human and economic costs of the war on drugs (Wasting Billions, Undermining Economies).
While the sheer enormity of these numbers is shocking enough, it is made all the more striking by the fact that such vast expenditures have accomplished so little. Drug prices, it appears, have been unaffected by law enforcement measures (Gallahue, Par. 3). Next there is the issue on mass incarcerations, overcrowding is one of the most difficult challenges that prison administrators face in the United States. There are many factors that affect the constant flow of people being processed in today’s prisons. The war on drugs has led to more arrests and convictions than any other crime. The war on drugs has succeeded in putting only millions of Americans in jail. From 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America for drug related charges quadrupled-from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people (NAACP, Par. 1). Housing all of those prisoners isn’t cheap, about $70 billion dollars are being spent on corrections yearly, and prisons and jails consume a growing portion of nearly $200 billion that we spend annually on public safety (NAACP, Par 5). Add it all up, and the Obama administration had to request $6.9 billion dollars for the Bureau of Prisons in fiscal 2013. That may not sound like much in the context of trillion-dollar deficits. But a recent report from the Urban Institute pointed out that if the current rate of incarceration continues, federal prisons will keep taking up a bigger and bigger chunk of the Department of Justice’s budget; rising to about 30 percent by 2020 (Figure 1). Prison has not been proven as a rehabilitation for behavior, as much as two-thirds will reoffend only. The biggest question as Americans, we should ask ourselves is it really worth using all these billions of dollars on a fight that we cannot win or do we use that money for something better, like cancer research or even unemployment? All of American’s tax dollars going into this war seem to be in vain, because it’s not progressing like it should.



In our modern world, we find our country in a costly war on drugs that is extremely unsuccessful. The War on Drugs has been going on for over forty years and it is counterproductive with drug abuse treatment. If the war on drugs persists, America will continue to crowd our prisons well over capacity with inmates guilty of minor possessions. Various cities all over America have begun to consider alternatives and legalization of numerous drugs. History tends to repeat itself and we could learn from the Prohibition era during the early 1900's. In order to stop excessive spending, decrease crime rates, offer logical treatment, and ensure the safety of the average American citizen; the United State's defective war on drugs must be terminated; the time has come to take a rational approach on drugs.