U.S. Drug Policy Versus Drug Reality Essay examples -- Argumentative P

If the United States is serious about winning the war on drugs, it will have to face some hard facts about the failure of its drug policy to date. Since Reagan introduced the war on drugs in the early 1980s, the focus of anti-drug legislation has been on incarceration and eradication, not on drug education and treatment. Drug use is viewed as a crimethe same way that burglary and murder are viewed as crimeswithout examining the social and economic causes behind drug use. This categorization of drug use as criminal misrepresents the nature of addiction. Drug addicts do not abuse drugs because they are deviant or even because they consciously desire to cause harm to themselves or to those around them, they abuse drugs because they are physically dependent on those substances for survival. The only effective way to break that cycle of dependency is through extensive detoxification and treatment programs. Not all advocates of reshaping Americas drug policy are in favor of legalization or complete decriminalizaton of drug use, though such steps are being increasingly entertained as a possible solution to Americas drug problem. On the contrary, a growing number of doctors and scientists are coming out in favor of a shift in Americas policies from hard-line law enforcement to rehabilitation and education-based deterrence. The need for such a shift in policy becomes more apparent when one weighs the magnitude of government outlays on drug-related law enforcement against the ineffectiveness of the war on drugs to date. A few basic statistics on federal allocation of anti-drug funds and on federal prison records illustrate the extent to which American drug policy is focused on the blunt tool of punishment. In 1997, the federal budget f... ... their ability to impair a persons judgment, etc. The government should realize that drug users are not criminals. They should establish more government treatment facilities in low income areas so that treatment would be an option available not only to wealthy actors and models but to the anonymous mass of low-income addicts. The free distribution of sterile needles is needed to combat the transmission of AIDSnot as a tacit advocacy of drug use. At an international meeting of the United Nations Drug Control Program in 1994, the United States refused to sign any statement mentioning the phrase harm reduction, as such a stance was seen as taking a soft-line on drugs. It is time for the United States government to wake up to the reality that the future of the War on Drugs lies with doctors, educators and sociologists and not with law enforcement agents and politicians.