War on Drugs
War on Drugs
The War on Drugs
Probably one of the most important issues that exists today is the current war on drugs. Beginning with the discovery of marijuana, the war on drugs has been raging for over 8 decades, when marijuana was found to have disorienting effects when smoked. The federal government soon had a say in the matter when they formed the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The very first, most efficient drug enforcement agency led by drug czar Henry Anslinger, the FBN used unlawful tactics to find anyone using or selling illegal substances and spread myths and fallacies to incriminate drugs as much as possible. One such examples of these lies was the anti-marijuana film Reefer Madness, which was used to show the “supposed” addictive properties of marijuana and the negative consequences of use which ranged from rape to violence. The first most official initiation
of the war started 34 years ago when it first came into submission by President Nixon in 1971. With the increase of marijuana use into counter-culture, Nixon declared that drugs were now public enemy #1. Two years later, Nixon formed the DEA(Drug Enforcement Agency) along with many other institutions that preceded it. Two of these programs were SODAP(Special Office for Drug Abuse Prevention) which was used to treat soldiers of the Vietnam war for heroin addiction by denying them return to the U.S. and ODALE (Office of Drug Abuse and Law Enforcement) which established task forces to break down on drug related crimes in the U.S. Three years later, Jimmy Carter ran for office and advocated the legalization/decriminalization of marijuana. During this time, cocaine use was beginning to increase as production in South America began to step-up. Perhaps one of the biggest improvements on the war on drugs was when Reagan won office. When he went into office in 1980, he formed the ONDCP(Office of National Drug Control Policy) which made any current and latter drug czars into Cabinet-level officials. Reagan no longer relied solely on the DEA as he had already formulated 30 other government agencies focused on drug enforcement and prevention. Such programs were spearheaded by Nancy Reagan and many of these included the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) and her “Just Say No” campaign which involved the use of commercials and advertisements. In 1989, George H. Bush was appointed to office and immediately began his war on drugs. He began by sending to troops into Panama to capture General Manuel Noriega and bring him to