Drug War

The war on drugs has cost the United States $1 trillion and nothing has improved. Why? A critical article on the war on drugs assesses the situation by stating that “We’ve never worked the drug problem holistically. We’ll arrest the drug dealer, but we leave the addiction.” This statement not only explains the faults of the war on drugs, but also the faults of the government in general. For example, look at our welfare system. This welfare system does not really help its victims. It provides them with food stamps and sometimes shelter, but it leaves the problem. Despite the fact that those in poverty are receiving aid, the issue of poverty will continue to exist because the government is not fixing the problem, it is fixing the symptoms. Furthermore, we can look at the issue of discrimination in the United States. Our society is clearly prejudiced and discriminates against people who aren’t white, who aren’t straight, who aren’t men, etc. In order to “solve” this problem, the government has put many laws in order, such as affirmative action, in order to ensure that discrimination does not negatively affect people. However, this is once again taming the symptoms, rather than tackling the underlying problems that create discrimination in our society. Despite the laws that are put in place to reduce discrimination, our society is clearly biased and prejudiced and will continue to be until the problem is fixed from the roots up.

To go back to the issue of the war on drugs, it can be argued that the war on drugs is just an excuse to oppress minority races. It can be seen that blacks are among the most targeted groups in the United States. In Law and Society, Kitty Calavita states that “54 percent of the people arrested for marijuana possession from 1997 to 2006 were black and only 14 percent were white” (100). What we can understand from this statistic is that there is a very clear divide between the law and what actually happens in society. As Calavita states, “laws that are neutral on their face are applied disparately” (100). Calavita goes on to explain that laws are “pliable” and that they can be skewed for or against certain populations. Now that this is understood, we have to ask ourselves if laws were constructed this way purposely by our government. My answer to this is yes. If you look back to when our country was founded, the tagline was “liberty for all.” But this was a boldfaced lie! If you were black, you had almost no liberties. If you were American Indian, you had almost no liberties. If you were a woman, you had almost no liberties. It all came down to the white man. And so, maybe the tagline should have read “liberty for white men” because after all, this is what our country ended up practicing. And after all, has much actually changed? In my opinion, this still seems to be a white man’s world.