war on drugs
In 1968, when American soldiers came home from the Vietnam War addicted to heroin, President Richard Nixon initiated the War on Drugs. More than a decade later, President Ronald Reagan launches the South Florida Drug Task force, headed by then Vice-President George Bush, in response to the city of Miami's demand for help. In 1981, Miami was the financial and import central for cocaine and marijuana, and the residents were fed up. Thanks to the task force, drug arrests went up by 27%, and drug seizures went up by 50%. With that, the need for prosecutors and judges also rose. Despite these increased arrests and seizures, marijuana and cocaine still poured into south Florida. At this stage, the root of the problem, the Colombian Cartels, was not attacked. The DEA soon realized that they needed to crack down on the cartels. In 1982 the DEA went to Colombia to eradicate fields of marijuana and coca plants. These fields were located and burned. The hard part now, was finding the labs used to turn the coca leaves into cocaine. These labs were in very remote locations, to avoid surveillance. The DEA suspected that the cocaine labs were very large, but the Colombians kept eluding them. Finally the DEA was able to track down the chemic
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1997), p. 20; Office of National Drug Control Policy, Executive Office of the White House, National Drug Control Strategy, 1997: Budget Summary (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1997), p. 111; Office of National Drug Control Policy, Executive Office of the White House, National Drug Control Strategy: Annual Report 2000 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2000), p. 96. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Population Estimates 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, 1999), pp. 19, 25, 31. Pub Date : 1990 (New Edition : 1996) Crack became more popular in inner cities because it was cheap compared to cocaine. Cocaine was seen as a drug for the rich, and crack was for the poor. Crack was also more addictive than cocaine, since smoking it made it more concentrated. Before the onset of crack, women were not statistically addicts. When women started using crack, it brought about a total disintegration of the family. Babies born to mothers who used crack were addicted themselves. Since the enactment of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug users, the Federal Bureau of Prisons budget increased by more than 1,350%, from $220 million in 1986 to about $3.19 billion in 1997. Shafer, Raymond P., et al, Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding, Ch. III, (Washington DC: National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 1972); Hall, W., Room, R. & Bondy, S., WHO Project on Health Implications of Cannabis Use: A Comparative Appraisal of the Health and Psychological Consequences of Alcohol, Cannabis, Nicotine and Opiate Use, August 28, 1995, (Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, March 1998).
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 5902
Approximate Pages = 24 (250 words per page double spaced)
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