The War on Drugs

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the war on drugs in the United States. It looks at the history and development of the war on drugs from as early as 1906, up until 1998. The paper looks at how the war on drugs affects the economy due to its financial burden. In addition, the paper looks at how this war brings racial issues to the fore and how it affects the prison population.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
History and Timeline of the War on Drugs
The Drain of the Economy due to the War on Drugs
The Economics of the War on Drugs
Race Issues linked to the War on Drugs
Prison Issues caused by the War on Drugs
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"There are many different sides to this war, but none that can be answered simply. This is a continual war; we cannot win because it is fought over substances that will never disappear but will continually be created and have a surplus in demand that grows higher everyday. There have been laws that try to eliminate these illegal substances and the horrible effects that are caused through the practice of them; but these laws have not done enough to help and instead have just drained our economy. Our society is obliged to live by tough drug laws that put a large percentage of our population in prison, cause police brutality rates to increase and have increased racial stereotypes."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Scalia, John, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Drug Offenders, 1999 with Trends 1984-99 Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, August 2001, p. 7.
• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), World Drug Report 2005 (Vienna, Austria: UNODC, June 2005), p. 127.
• Becker http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/news/capideas/may05/battletactics.html
• Lawrence, Sarah and Jeremy Travis, The New Landscape of Imprisonment: Mapping America's Prison Expansion Washington, DC: Urban Institute, April 2004, p. 3.
• U.S. Congress, Hearings on Federal Drug Enforcement before the Senate Committee on Investigations, 1975 and 1976 (1976); Office of National Drug Control Policy, National Drug Control Strategy, 1992: Budget Summary (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 214; Office of National Drug Control Policy, National Drug Control Budget Executive Summary, Fiscal Year 2002 (Washington DC: Executive Office of the President, April 9, 2001), p. 2, Table 1: Office of National Drug Control Policy, "National Drug Control Strategy: FY 2003 Budget Summary" (Washington, DC: Office of the President, February 2002), Table 2, p. 6.

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