It's Time To End The War On Drugs

The War On Drugs, started by President Richard Nixon in 1971, was made to reduce the usage of drugs in America. 46 years and more than 1 trillion dollars later, where are we in achieving that goal?

As of 2016, the US had 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prison population. A lot of this has to contribute to non-violent drug offenders who are 1 in every 5 prisoners in the US. An unsafe black market has risen that makes drugs cut with harmful substances, such as elephant tranquilizer to make it more potent, and making sure that the amount of drugs stays the same. Violence has risen in countries that take an offensive to this "war". It is calculated that around 25-75% of crime in the US wouldn't have happened if the war on drugs was never declared. Mexican Cartels, the fear of every US politician and is almost always brought up in any conversation on the war on drugs, have only become more powerful as the war cracks down harder in the US. Governments in Latin America, Africa, and Asia have been overturned in an attempt to stop the usage of drugs, such as Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines, who has likened himself to Hitler. He is reportedly responsible for the deaths of 2000+ people involved in the drug industry and wants to kill more. This is the result of a 46 year war, and the amount of drugs and drug addicts have stayed about the same. It's time to end this war.

Focusing On Marijuana

The drug marijuana is the most popular foe in this war on drugs in America, with 29 states deciding to legalize it in some form. Marijuana can be used for recreational or medicinal use. Many cancer patients use it to cope with pain, along with others with terminal and painful diseases. Many people with disorders, such as veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, will also use marijuana. Recreational marijuana is a bigger market, with the ability to be made in many different forms. The states that have legalized marijuana on a recreational level have experienced an economic boom from it. Marijuana is also extremely safe, as you would need to smoke approximately 75 kilograms in a 15 minute time frame, an impossible feat.

Hemp, a "cousin" of marijuana and also illegal under federal law, is another big market and can be used for paper, fuel, oils, medicine, clothing, housing, plastic, rope, and food without getting the users high due to its low tetrahy-drocannabinol (THC) count. It is also extremely environmentally friendly as it takes 1 acre of hemp to make the same amount of paper as 4.1 acres of trees. This can reduce the amount of deforestation exponentially.

With all of this going for it, cannabis looks like a miracle crop to some, while others still demonize it. The current administration is set to wreak havoc on the entire market even on a state level. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has repeatedly come out against it, saying "good people don't smoke marijuana" and wants to attack it at a state level, despite being from the party that parades around about states' rights. Even medical marijuana is unsafe as long as Jeff Sessions is Attorney General as he's vowed to crack down on it too.

Then Senator Jeff Sessions quoting Lady Gaga to make a point on marijuana.

Despite the words of Attorney General Sessions and those like him, America thinks otherwise. 61% of Americans believe marijuana should be legalized and that number is on the rise. But despite the simple reasoning that Nixon listed to the public in 1971, why would Nixon have made such a harmless and profitable drug like marijuana illegal? What was the real reason behind the drug war?

In an interview in 1994 with journalist Dan Baum, John Ehrlichman, Nixon's chief domestic advisor who served 18 months in jail for his role in the Watergate scandal, talked about the real motives behind the drug war. The following is the April cover story of Harper's:

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Ehrlichman says that the war on drugs was made to eliminate two masses of people who disliked him the most, those who were against the Vietnam War and the African-American population. By criminalizing them, they were able to take these communities on in the fullest extent of the law and demonize them in the media. The Nixon Administration knew they were lying about the drugs, that wasn't their motive. Their motive was to ruin the communities that disliked him the most.

After all of this information, you must ask yourself, is the drug war really solving anything? The answer is out, and it's an astounding no.