Criminal Justice and the War on Drugs

If you've never heard of the War on Drugs, consider looking into it a bit in your spare time. In short, in June 1971 President Richard Nixon declared what he called a "war on drugs," due in large part to the greatly increased use of drugs by people in the US. The government halted research into the medical effects of drugs, and dramatically increased the size of federal drug control agencies and their presence in the country. Notably, there was a backlash by some in government around this time. In 1972 the commission formed by Nixon himself, led by Republican governor of Pennsylvania of Raymond Shafer, decided unanimously to recommend decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana, a recommendation ignored by Nixon.  

The controversy around the War on Drugs mainly consists of a few key questions: How did this effect people who where and are using drugs, and what effect did this have on the country over all? One thing lost about the 1980s, coming increasingly into public view now as we review prison policy, is the effect the war on drugs had on incarcerations in the country. The 80s brought with it a remarkable amount of drug hysteria and mass incarcerations, fueled in part by President Reagan's very controversial mandatory minimums policy, a response to the rise of crack and crack cocaine in the country. The policy states, naturally, that there is a minimum sentence to be imposed on people depending on the crimes they are being charged with. This policy is responsible, in part, for the extreme rise in prison populations in the United States, which has an extreme proportion of the prison population of the world. 

Significantly, the War on Drugs and the actions that followed it have had extremely negative effects on the US as a whole. It has helped to fuel anti-drug hysteria and unreasonably harsh laws which have greatly damaged America's prisons system.

Globally and Nationally, the War on Drugs destabilized a wide range of communities, including those in Latin America which have seen a dramatic rise in cartel violence. This can be explained in the fact that the war on drugs and mass incarcerations does nothing to decrease the demand for drugs in the US, it simply punishes people without providing much-needed assistance. In a most basic model,the US has reduced the supply of drugs in the country by cracking down on drug dealers and traffickers, however it did nothing to reduce the demand, which of course resulted in a dramatic rise in drug prices, making drug manufacturing and trafficking all the more profitable.