Should The U.S. End The War On Drugs?

Rohan Mittal

SOC 201

December 4 2015
 In 1971, President Nixon declared the War on Drugs. He said, America's public enemy

number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is

necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive (Nixon). Over the past four decades the United

States has spent over 1 trillion dollars on the drug war. The United States continues to pour in 51

billion dollars a year in order to fund this war. Such a large expense requires results in order to

justify it. Unfortunately, the results do not justify the massive amount of money spent on this

war. The drug war has been a massive failure. In 2013, about 1.5 million Americans were

arrested due to nonviolent drug offences. Nearly 44,000 people were killed due to drug

overdoses. If the drug war truly was successful, these numbers should be much smaller. Since the

drug war has been such a massive failure, the United States must ask itself, Should The War On

Drugs be ended? The answer is quite simple. The War On Drugs should end because it is a

waste of money and it is not getting any results.

A big question that people have with regards to the War On Drugs is, Why is it not

working? Common sense and basic human intuition says that if someone commits an act and

they are punished for that act, then others should be deterred from committing the same act.

However, in 2013 an estimated 24.6 million Americans used drugs.