Drug War

Drug war
Every weekend night on Cops, we see "drug crazed" criminals being escorted to the back of police cruisers to be place under arrest. There is neither name nor story behind the person, they are just labeled as criminals and portrayed as bad people. America has the highest percentages of incarceration rates in the world. This was on drugs has slowly become a war on lower class and has placed many people behind bars for minor offenses. This year nearly 300,000 people will be arrested for drug charges, and almost 2,000 will be incarcerated for drug charges. Prison is a harsh environment, but it's even harder for drug addicts and actually the wrong environment. Every person has a story; some will tell a fairy tale and others a nightmare. America's new war on drugs and those who possess them is becoming a legal and culture slaughter imposed on our minorities and lower class Americans. The total amount of money that will be spent on the war on drugs this year is almost $8,100,000,000 and rising every second.

The war on drugs incriminates many more problems that it prevents. In the year 2002, 47.53% of all drugs offender in jail were African American. Prison makes a man's life harder. After prison it is hard to find a job that will accept and ex-con as an employee. It is also hard to get a place to live and security. The recidivism in this country is 60%. Most who got to jail once for drug charges usually get arrested again and end up incarcerated again because they had not been able to make a living outside of prison. This evidence of a flaw in our justice system: we are not rehabilitating these drug offenders but de-socializing them. 1.46 million African American men are not allowed to cote due to convictions and 13% of all adult black men are disenfranchised. Prison is not solving anything. It is focusing on the vulnerability of mostly the African American community. The war on drugs causes more hard than it does good. Ralph Reiland argues that, "Prohibition... [continues]

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