Drugs and Crime

Drugs and Crime
________________________________________
Drug use, drug-related crime, drug laws, and drug-enforcement efforts significantly affect processes of criminal justice. This has been and will most likely be a controversial topic for years. A large proportion of the financial and personnel resources of the criminal justice system is used to respond to the drug problem in the United States. For example, police departments utilize undercover operations to increase the number of arrests of drug offenders, prosecutions for drug offenses overwhelm court dockets, and the number of defendants incarcerated for drug offenses continues to grow.
In this chapter we will talk about the drug problem and its history. What is a drug? Where does it come from? We learn from the text the history of drug abuse, covering the use of opium, morphine, and heroin in the 1800s and early 1900s, the response to marijuana in the 1900s, the use of LSD in the 1960s and 1970s, the use of crack cocaine in the 1980s, and the increased use of club drugs in the 1990s.
There is an equally rich history of the anti-drug laws in the United States. The first significant piece of federal anti-drug legislation was the Harrison Act of 1914. The text describes the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, the Narcotic Control Act of 1956, the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. This latter piece of legislation created the position of drug czar within the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
There are four major drug types:
1. Marijuana
2. Cocaine
3. Heroin
4. Club drugs

Types of Drugs and the Drug Problem
Have you ever wondered how these drugs are produced, consumed, and trafficked into the United States? Cocaine, for example, is extracted from the leaves of the coca plant, produces intense psychological effects, and typically enters the United States from Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, or Ecuador.
What are the social problems related to... [continues]

Read full essay