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In 1996, 59.6% of prisoners were drug-related criminals. U.S. population grew by about +25% from 1980 to 2000. In that same 20 year time period, U.S. prison population tripled. To make room in prison for incoming drug users and dealers, all inmates, including violent criminals are having their sentences shortened or are being paroled early” (Drug Laws). As one can see the use of drugs among Americans is shortening the sentences of violent criminals to make room for drug users and dealers. This matter will decrease if we begin to intervene in the home, next, the schools, and last but not least the individual…
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The United States only has 5 percent of the world's population and uses 75 percent of the world's prescription drugs. The United States has the highest prison population out of all the countries and almost half of the prisoners are there because of drug crimes. Due to the ever increasing drug use in the U.S. today, our society would benefit from less punishment and more rehabilitation, some benefits include less spending, lower incarceration rates and lower death rates.…
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So with this Nixon and the U.S. Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The CSA Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 is the federal U.S drug policy under which the manufacture, importation, possession, use and distribution of certain narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, anabolic steroids and other chemicals ( Reuters). Therefore, since the year of 1970 people have been well aware and informed about the usage and affiliation with drugs. People still dare to challenge the law and that is why they still continue to do these illegal acts. While in the act of being “sneaky” they are put in prison if caught and that’s where the decriminalization act would come into play. Decriminalizing drugs is not making them legal, but instead revolves around criminal charges from the action. Decriminalizing drugs would indeed help keep people out of prison, but at what risk. Drugs are addicting and what happens when a person who uses the first time is caught, what is to happen when they are released and get into a bigger mess and involve more people or lives are lost because this criminal was only a first offense so they had little to no punishment. We do not let murders go if they only kill one person for the first time do we? Although, some people are caught at the wrong time at the wrong place, but that's where law enforcement should step up and go the extra mile to prove the innocent, innocent. That's where our Fifth Amendment rights kick in- innocent until proven guilty- all necessary procedures should be taken to stop an innocent person from being put…
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The increased use of for-profit privatized prisons in the United States has created a system of mass incarceration due to compromised motivation for these institutions to maximize profits. Over the last four and a half decades, the United States has experienced a surge in the incarceration rates. In 2013, 1,598,780 people occupied state or federal prisons compared to 196,429 in 1970 (“Incarceration Generation” 1). This rise in prison population may be a result of harsher penalties and legislation on non-violent crimes. For instance, President Nixon officially declared the “War on Drugs” in 1973 and endorsed this through the creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration's (“Incarceration Generation” 1). The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, passed…
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http://www.gobookee.org/ebook/a-case-of-acute-pancreatitis-national-center-for-case-17o1gj/ Page 1 NATI O NAL CENTER F O R CASE STUDY TEACHING IN SCIENC E Case Teaching Notes for “A Case of Acute Pancreatitis” by David F. Dean I NTRODUCTION / B ACKGROUND Th e pancreas is an organ that possesses both endocrine and exocrine functions and is located in the upper right quadrant of the abdominal cavity. Th e endocrine function of the pancreas relates to the secretion of two hormones, insulin and glucagon, which serve to regulate the levels of blood glucose.…
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On June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon committed what is arguably one of his most significant and lasting executive acts when he issued a special message to Congress regarding the growing drug abuse problem within the United States. Although this message was significant in many ways because of the public acknowledgment that the Federal Government was not doing enough to combat drugs and their associated ills, this message is mostly remembered as the origin of the term the War on Drugs. We are now over forty years removed from that “declaration of war,” and not only has the United States ' drug problem remained, it has grown to unthinkable proportions,…
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The "war on drugs" started over 100 years ago in San Francisco, California when the first law against drugs was enacted to stop the "smoking of opium." In all actuality, this law was against the Chinese people living in the U.S., because they were known for smoking of the opium as a custom. The government feared that opium induced Chinese men would try to lure white women to them. The next drug that was considered illegal was cocaine. The law enacted against cocaine was against Negroes. The government feared that Negroes would use the drug and become violent and go on rampages of raping white women. (Schaffer, n.d.)…
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Yet people in law enforcement and local communities are not convinced for good reasons. Although casual illegal drugs use appears to fluctuate and may have declined in recent years, the regular usage of these drugs has not. The government warning about how dangerous these are, such as; heroin, marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine only confuse matter further. Actually, such warning are an indication that these drugs are unwinnable. Production sources , smuggling techniques, purity price and use patterns have changed through the years in dynamic drugs markets as governments has made claims of progress, but the war on drugs that began in 1914 has no end in…
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Following the start of Nixon’s drug war the incarceration rate has increased up to 700% in 2005, according to Pew researchers. "After a 700-percent increase in the US prison population between 1970 and 2005, you'd think the nation would finally have run out of lawbreakers to put behind bars," said the report by Pew's Public Safety Performance Project. But apparently we haven’t yet. In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans were arrested on drug charges, more than were arrested on assault or larceny charges. And 4 of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession.…
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Drug offenders have represented the most substantial source of growth in recent decades, starting with forty thousand inmates in 1980 to four hundred and fifty thousand inmates today. Despite the fact that the number of persons in prison today for drug offenses is more than ten times the number in 1980, drug use rates remain substantial, with data indicating a general increase over the past few years. During a period, when the number of persons in prison for drug law violations was growing at a rate faster than other offense types, the underlying behavior appears to have experienced little impact. Due to todays new consciousness about the unfairness and effectiveness of harsh crack cocaine mandatory sentences has emerged among policy makers and the United States Sentencing Commission. These unfair sentencing laws, have a dramatic effect on the cause of overcrowding in prisons for decades.…
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Among problems the United States faces, one of the most prominent is the incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders. While the jailing of drug offenders does not seem so serious at first glance, under close inspection this proves otherwise. Among the flaws of this system, are the elevated crime rates that compare poorly to the rate of nations worldwide, the excessive budget wasted on housing these drug offenders, and finally, the sheer unconstitutionality of it all. By…
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The use of incarceration as a system of discipline or punishment dates back to medieval times. For hundreds of years, critics and punitive experts within our society have studied, researched, and made changes to the physical punishment methods and restored it with incarceration. The passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 gave a crime control perspective that increasing arrests and punishments for drug offenses to have a profound impact on correctional populations and minorities (D.L. MacKenzie). Today, the U.S. has more jails and prisons than there are colleges and universities. In 2010, there were 2.3 million prisoners in the United States (C. Ingraham). There are simply not enough correctional officers to counter the smuggling…
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10 Billions of dollars are spent on the war on drugs each year. IT destroy families and ruins lives.…
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As I learned more about the War, I realized that drug prohibition causes more societal harm than good, and it is possible for people to use recreational drugs responsibly. We must admit defeat in the War on Drugs, before one of your family members, or friends, or your significant other is arrested and sent to prison for a non-violent drug offense, probably facing a harsh minimum sentence of a couple years and a felony hindering their post-release…
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As Americans in the United States we face the war on drugs, we struggle to get a…
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