Since the early 90’s, there have been different elected officials in the head office; each with a different strategy in hopes of solving the War on Drugs. The United States became heavily engaged in this war following the arrest of two prominent leaders: General Noriega of Panama, and the mayor of the District of Columbia, Marion S. Berry. Realizing the impact these arrest had on the country and worldwide, the United States intended to spend $9 billion and the U.S. plan was to legalize drugs and subject them to government taxation and regulation in hopes of controlling drug abuse. These anti-drugs effort began during the Reagan administration, as has carried on into the Obama administration.
Throughout Reagan’s tenure, his strategy to curtail the drug supply was aimed at every link in the distribution chain, from the field to the street. The program had special attention towards disrupting the drug distribution network near or at the U.S. border by Interdiction efforts included seizure of drug shipments on seagoing vessels as well as on small aircraft and others into the United States. This was a response to a spike in the crack epidemic; however, Reagan’s program proved to be quite unsuccessful ineffective. As for Bush’s strategy, there was less of an emphasis on the interdiction of drug imports at the border and instead, greater law-enforcement efforts to arrest and punish both the sellers and users of illegal drugs.
As for our current President, Obama’s administration plans on spending $25 billion on their strategy to tackle this War on Drugs. The breakdown of the spending goes as the following: “43 cents of each dollar will be spent on programs aimed at reducing Americans’ demand for drugs, a part of the president’s health strategy—what the administration officially calls drug ‘demand reduction.’ The rest of the funding—about 57 cents of each dollar, or a total of $14.4 billion—will be spent on “supply reduction,” federal efforts to root out drug producers and sellers. That includes $9.2 billion to support domestic law enforcement’s anti-drug actions.”
In my opinion, less money needs to be spent and more research needs to be done to finally implement a successful strategy. A $17 billion dollar increase in spending over the past 20 years with nothing to show for it, proves that there is inefficient research that’s done before spending all this money. We must research the demand for the drugs in our home country, and what these drugs are. We must also investigate where they are stemming from in order to crack down on this system from within. Then we can spend money and implement these strategies. Overall a combination of the Obama plan and the Bush plan would be most successful in today’s society. Focusing on the border wars will allow the internal war on drugs in our own country to remain unnoticed and grow more dangerous.
The Failed War on Drugs 