The term, "The War on Drugs" was first coined by President Richard Milhous Nixon on June 17, 1971, but in actuality the war on drugs began in California in 1913. California had become the first state in the union to criminalize Marijuana, by making the preparation of hemp and its products illegal.
The Harrison Tax Act, which was enacted on December 17, 1914
, was the first federal drug law. This act charged a tax on opium, coca leaves, and all their salts and derivatives. The courts at the time determined the legislation to mean physicians could use and prescribe these drugs during the normal course of treatment, but could not use them as a treatment for addiction. In addition it was decided that possession of these drugs was illegal for anyone but licensed distributors of these products. This decision launched the war on drugs at the federal level, a war that specifically targets the impoverished.
In 1924 The Heroin act was passed, making heroin, (a drug that was created in 1874 as a cure for addiction to morphine), completely illegal for the first time in American history. A few years later, (1937), the Marijuana Tax Act was pushed through on behalf of Randolph Hearst, and DuPont, to protect Hearst's massive timber holdings, which were threatened by the availability of hemp as pulp for the newspaper industry, and to protect DuPont's newly invented nylon fiber from competition. This was amidst an uproar from the AMA, whose doctors used Marijuana as part of their medical treatment regemin. The tax act was passed despite the AMA rallying it's doctors to have marijuana added to the Harrison Tax Act. With the Marijuana Tax Act the government had its big three drugs, (its trifecta if you will), which it rallied behind, passing many successive laws as the years went by, making virtually every psychoactive drug illegal.
In 1970 the Controlled Substance Act was passed as part of a much bigger law, but what it did was combined most if not all of the drug regulations passed to date, and dealt with concerns about the drugs and the materials to make them. Of course with this kind of massive monstrosity there had to be an enforcement arm, so on July 1st, 1973, the Drug Enforcement Administration was born, (and of course because a government agency has to justify its spending), the war on drugs was thrown into high gear.
In 1983 the government upped the ante on their crackdown of the impoverished, by passing legislation that created a 100:1 sentencing disparity on mandatory sentences for crack cocaine versus cocaine in it's powdered form. With these laws 5 grams of cocaine carried the same mandatory 5 year federal sentence of 500 grams of powder cocaine. The law was changed in 2010 so there was only an 18:1 disparity, but it still obviously attacks poor and minority people.
In 1994 there were and estimated 1,000,000 arrests for drug related charges annually in the US, with 225,000 of those for marijuana, by 2008, that number had jumped to a staggering 1,500,000 arrests for drugs.
Aside from feeding the impoverished to the criminal justice system, the stigma of a drug conviction keeps offenders from landing meaningful employment, it keeps them from getting education grants and loans, and it keeps them from getting any kind of food assistance while they try to find employment, (in some places it even keeps them from getting licenses), leading them to commit yet more crimes, and landing them back in the penal system.
The War on Drugs costs the American taxpayer and estimated $44 billion a year in law enforcement costs alone, which does not include the costs associated with the courts or the prison system, and definitely does not include the toll against, or on the American family.
The toll of The War on Drugs in respect to human lives, and destroyed families is immense. Every year nearly 450,000 children are snatched from their parents arms by the American version of the Schutzstaffel, otherwise known as Child Protective Services, (a misnomer because many of the children in foster care are psychologically abused, physically abused, and raped in foster homes, with the states standing idly by), 50% of which are never reunited with their families. Once it has been determined a person has used drugs, (even one as harmless as marijuana), the family is torn apart. Of course CPS and its policies will be the focus of a different article in this series, for its part in The War on the Impoverished.
The drug war is not a war on drugs, it is a war on families, a war on freedom, a war on minorities, but most especially it is a war on the impoverished. If drugs were decriminalized or legalized today, there would be no more people using them tomorrow, than are using them right now. The main difference would be many less lives would be destroyed by politicians trying to legislate morality. To use or not use drugs is a personal choice that every individual makes and it's a choice not dictated out of any fear of the law, it's a choice made based on a persons goals, and morality. The best way to stop the use of drugs in this country is to teach our children our values, not to destroy their lives for our failure to do our job as parents and family members of those same children.
To me the government using it's 3 letter agencies to enforce morality in this country and around the world is completely immoral and hypocritical. We have the DEA, and the CIA etc.buying and selling drugs in foreign nations, many of which make it back to the US, and are then used against the American people in this outrageous war. It's just insane. Next time a law comes up, like the one in California a few months ago, that calls for the legalization of a drug, it should be passed resoundingly, remember these laws are a war on the very fabric of our country.
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