The Anti-Narcotics War

The Anti-Narcotic War

A legacy of failure: reevulating the war on drugs 40 years later — McCartney Fix, Co-Sports and Co-News Editor There are arguably no two names more synonymous with America's war on drugs then those of the 36th and 40th presidents respectively, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Nixon, for signing into the law of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), a statute responsible for enacting the 5 schedule system in which each individual substance that was previously regulated under federal law is placed into one of 5 classifications. The passing of the CSA as well as the Press Conference held on June 17, 1971 in which President Nixon proclaimed America's substance abuse issue to be “public enemy number one,” are often held up by pundits as the beginnings of America’s war on drugs. President Regan expanded the baseline policies Nixon introduced with his primary focus being shifted towards the passing of Photo from creativecommons.orglegislation which severely increased the penalties for nonviolent drug offenders. Almost immediately, the consequences of America’s harsher drug policies were felt in the yearly incarceration rate, which ballooned to 247 people per 100,000 by the end of Reagan's second term and has grown exponentially since then. These statistics viewed with 40 years of hindsight paint a bleak of dishonest portrait of the issue, entirely devoid of necessary historical context. In 1969, when Nixon entered the Oval Office, America at large was coping with a heroin epidemic that had ravaged much of Washington D.C. By the time Nixon made his now infamous “public enemy number one” speech in 1971 the overdose rate of heroin addicts was at 74% according to deamuseum.org. Throughout much of President Reagan's two terms, America was ravaged by a crack cocaine epidemic which saw between 4.2 and 5.8 million individuals admit to routinely snorting cocaine and/or smoking crack. Throughout both of their terms, President Nixon and Reagan were confronted with large scale drug epidemics, but in their individual searches for solutions each created more problems. The option neither man explored was that of rehabilitation. In what would come to be known as a costly lapse in judgment, Nixon opted to criminalize drug use while Regan doubled down on the notion that it should be a prosecutable offense. As our knowledge of addiction has grown, it is becoming more and more clear that punishing addicts not only stifles their recovery, but leads to considerably more repeat offenders. America could have possibly saved billions of dollars and spared millions from jail time if it had embraced the more humane alternative. Instead, they opted to make criminals of victims. Design by Scout Hurley