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Pretext Stops                                       Date : ?

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Pretext Stops                                       Date : ?

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Pretext stop is a way that officers use to stop anyone they suspect of any type of crime. And if they were to stop you but can't find any reason to stop you so then they'll might stop you for something that was little like if you didn't have any head lights on . Then they will stop you , then they will tell you why they stopped you but they will get of topic and ask you to search your car . Then of course since you are so scared you will say yes go ahead . And knowing that you have some type of drug on you , You know that you will get arrested for something that you weren't stopped for in the first place.

This has increased mass incarceration because police are stopping random people for little traffic violations an since they have the power of consent to search they will search you without you knowing that you could say no to it then they find something illegal in your car like drugs or a gun . And if they do find all of that it's of to jail .And most of the people they stop won't have nothing on them but some of them do have something on them .

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PRETEXTUAL TRAFFIC STOPS: Injustice for Minority Drivers

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PRETEXTUAL TRAFFIC STOPS: Injustice for Minority Drivers

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Anti-Drug Abuse Act                     1986 also around this time period.

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Anti-Drug Abuse Act                     1986 also around this time period.

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"increased research, into, and prevention of, drug abuse and drug dependence; to provide for treatment and rehabilitation of drug abusers and drug dependent persons; and to strengthen existing law enforcement authority in the field of drug abuse."
I don't know how this increased mass incarceration It's more like it tried to decrease drug use which it could also be to reduce drug incarceration

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anti drug abuse act of 1986 effects - Google Search

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Oct 26, 2006 ... The report details discriminatory effects of the drug law that devastated ... The Anti- Drug Abuse Act of 1986, passed during the media frenzy ...

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Fair Sentencing Act                         Aug 3 , 2010

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Fair Sentencing Act                         Aug 3 , 2010

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Fair sentencing is an act that was made to reduce the sentencing for crack cocaine either for rock or powder cocaine . Found on someone .This act was signed by President Barack Obama .
This Is more like it reduced a little bit of sentencing for the drug . which is that no one would go to jail for a very long time for having a pinch of cocaine which reduced sentencing for that type of drug .But you will still go to jail for a long time if you have a whole bunch of cocaine on then and they will go to jail for a long long time.

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Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (Pub.L. 111-220) was an Act of Congress that was signed into federal law by U.S. President Barack Obama on August 3, 2010 that reduces the disparity between the amount of crack cocaine and powder cocaine needed to trigger certain federal criminal penalties from a 100:1 weight ratio to an ...

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Consent Searches              1996 around that time

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Consent Searches              1996 around that time

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Consent searches is when a police officers stops you and ask you if he or she can search you car and he dose not need a warrant for this search you car or your belongings .

This increased mass incarceration because they would stop people probably for not putting his signal to turn or just for a little traffic violation then once they stopped you they would tell you what you did then they would ask you if they can search your car . But most of the people that got stopped and searched they wouldn't have nothing but the ones that had something to would be put in jail for something they weren't stopped for which increased mass incarceration .

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Consent searches are the most common form of warrantless searches. A search warrant or probable cause is not necessary if consent is given by someone with proper authority. In order to conduct a consent search, the person whose property is being searched must voluntarily waive his or her Fourth Amendment rights.

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Twenty-eight states have some form of a "three-strikes" law. A person accused under such laws is referred to in a few states (notably Connecticut and Kansas) as a " persistent offender", while Missouri uses the unique term " prior and persistent offender".

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Slavery v. Peonage | Slavery By Another Name Bento | PBS

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Slavery v. Peonage | Slavery By Another Name Bento | PBS

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Historians explain peonage, also called debt slavery or debt servitude, and how employers compelled workers to pay off a debt with work.

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The war on drugs is a global campaign, led by the United States federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the United States. The initiative includes a set of drug policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of psychoactive drugs that the participating governments and the United Nations have made illegal. The term was popularized by the media shortly after a press conference given on June 18, 1971, by President Richard Nixon-the day after publication of a special message from President Nixon to the Congress on Drug Abuse Prevention and Control-during which he declared drug abuse "public enemy number one". That message to the Congress included text about devoting more federal resources to the "prevention of new addicts, and the rehabilitation of those who are addicted" but that part did not receive the same public attention as the term "war on drugs". Two years prior to this, Nixon had formally declared a "war on drugs" that would be directed toward eradication, interdiction, and incarceration. In 2015, the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for an end to the War on Drugs, estimated that the United States spends $51 billion annually on these initiatives, and in 2021, after 50 years of the drug war, others have estimated that the US has spent a cumulative $1 trillion on it.

On May 13, 2009, Gil Kerlikowske-the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)-signaled that the Obama administration did not plan to significantly alter drug enforcement policy, but also that the administration would not use the term "War on Drugs", because Kerlikowske considers the term to be "counter-productive". ONDCP's view is that "drug addiction is a disease that can be successfully prevented and treated... making drugs more available will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe".

19th century

Morphine was first isolated from opium between 1803 and 1805, and hypodermic syringes were first constructed in 1851. This was particularly significant during the American Civil War, when wounded soldiers were treated with morphine. This led to widespread morphine addiction among veterans of the war.

Until 1912, products such as heroin were sold over-the-counter in a form of cough syrup. Doctors also prescribed heroin for irritable babies, bronchitis, insomnia, "nervous conditions", hysteria, menstrual cramps, and "vapors", leading to mass addiction. In addition, laudanum, an opioid, was a common part of the home medicine cabinet.

In fiction, Conan Doyle portrayed the hero, Sherlock Holmes, as a cocaine addict.

20th century

The first U.S. law that restricted the distribution and use of certain drugs was the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. The first local laws came as early as 1860. In 1919, the United States passed the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, with exceptions for religious and medical use. In 1920, the United States passed the National Prohibition Act (Volstead Act), enacted to carry out the provisions in the law of the 18th Amendment.

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established in the United States Department of the Treasury by an act of June 14, 1930 (46 Stat. 585). In 1933, the federal prohibition for alcohol was repealed by passage of the 21st Amendment. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt publicly supported the adoption of the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act. The New York Times used the headline "Roosevelt Asks Narcotic War Aid".

In 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed. Several scholars have claimed that the goal was to destroy the hemp industry, largely as an effort of businessmen Andrew Mellon, Randolph Hearst, and the Du Pont family. These scholars argue that with the invention of the decorticator, hemp became a very cheap substitute for the paper pulp that was used in the newspaper industry. These scholars believe that Hearst felt[dubious ] that this was a threat to his extensive timber holdings. Mellon, United States Secretary of the Treasury and the wealthiest man in America, had invested heavily in the DuPont's new synthetic fiber, nylon, and considered[dubious ] its success to depend on its replacement of the traditional resource, hemp. However, there were circumstances that contradict these claims. One reason for doubts about those claims is that the new decorticators did not perform fully satisfactorily in commercial production. Production of fiber from hemp, requiring harvest, transport and processing, was a labor-intensive process. Technological developments decreased the labor required but not sufficiently to eliminate this disadvantage.

Although Nixon declared "drug abuse" to be public enemy number one in 1971, the policies that his administration implemented as part of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 were a continuation of drug prohibition policies in the U.S., which started in 1914.

The motives behind Nixon's campaign against drugs are disputed. John Ehrlichman, who was Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under Nixon, was quoted by Dan Baum as saying in 1994:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

The veracity of the quote has been questioned by Ehrlichman's family, while Vox senior correspondent German Lopez has suggested that Ehrlichman was either wrong or lying. According to Lopez:

But Ehrlichman's claim is likely an oversimplification, according to historians who have studied the period and Nixon's drug policies in particular. There's no doubt Nixon was racist, and historians told me that race could have played one role in Nixon's drug war. But there are also signs that Nixon wasn't solely motivated by politics or race: For one, he personally despised drugs - to the point that it's not surprising he would want to rid the world of them. And there's evidence that Ehrlichman felt bitter and betrayed by Nixon after he spent time in prison over the Watergate scandal, so he may have lied.

More importantly, Nixon's drug policies did not focus on the kind of criminalization that Ehrlichman described. Instead, Nixon's drug war was largely a public health crusade - one that would be reshaped into the modern, punitive drug war we know today by later administrations, particularly President Ronald Reagan...

"It's certainly true that Nixon didn't like blacks and didn't like hippies," Courtwright said. "But to assign his entire drug policy to his dislike of these two groups is just ridiculous."

In 1973, the Drug Enforcement Administration was created to replace the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

The Nixon Administration also repealed the federal 2 to 10-year mandatory minimum sentences for possession of marijuana and started federal demand reduction programs and drug-treatment programs. Robert DuPont, the "drug czar" in the Nixon Administration, stated it would be more accurate to say that Nixon ended, rather than launched, the "war on drugs". DuPont also argued that it was the proponents of drug legalization that popularized the term "war on drugs".

The presidency of Ronald Reagan saw an expansion in the federal focus of preventing drug abuse and for prosecuting offenders. In the first term of the presidency, Ronald Reagan signed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, which expanded penalties towards possession of cannabis, established a federal system of mandatory minimum sentences, and established procedures for civil asset forfeiture. From 1980 to 1984, the federal annual budget of the FBI's drug enforcement units went from 8 million to 95 million. According to historian Elizabeth Hinton, Reagan was a strong proponent of criminalizing drug users during his presidency in the 1980s; she wrote that "[he] led Congress in criminalizing drug users, especially African American drug users, by concentrating and stiffening penalties for the possession of the crystalline rock form of cocaine, known as "crack", rather than the crystallized methamphetamine that White House officials recognized was as much of a problem among low-income white Americans". Support for Reagan's crime legislation was bipartisan. According to Hinton, Democrats supported his legislation as they had since the Johnson administration, though Reagan was a Republican.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) was originally established by the National Narcotics Leadership Act of 1988, which mandated a national anti-drug media campaign for youth, which would later become the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. The director of ONDCP is commonly known as the drug czar, and it was first implemented in 1989 under President George H. W. Bush, and raised to cabinet-level status by Bill Clinton in 1993. These activities were subsequently funded by the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act of 1998. The Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998 codified the campaign at 21 U.S.C. § 1708.

21st century

In the early 21st century, the war on drugs began being referred to as "the new Jim Crow". This mentality was further popularized by lawyer and civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander, who wrote The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness in 2010.

At the turn of the century, incarceration rates in the United States disproportionately consisted of African-American men, according to an article from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In 2001, "the number of black men in prison (792,000) [had] already equaled the number of men enslaved in 1820. With the current momentum of the drug war fueling an ever expanding prison-industrial complex, if current trends continue, only 15 years remain before the United States incarcerates as many African-American men as were forced into chattel bondage at slavery's peak, in 1860".

An international group called the Global Commission on Drug Policy composed of former heads of state and government released a report on June 2, 2011, stating that "The global war on drugs has failed." The commission was made up of 22 self-appointed members including a number of prominent international politicians and writers. U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin also released the first-ever National Prevention Strategy, a framework towards preventing drug abuse and promoting healthy, active lifestyles.

On May 21, 2012, the U.S. Government published an updated version of its drug policy. The director of ONDCP stated simultaneously that this policy is somewhat different from the "War on Drugs":

The U.S. Government sees the policy as a "third-way" approach to drug control; an approach that is based on the results of a huge investment in research from some of the world's preeminent scholars on the disease of substance abuse.

The policy does not see drug legalization as the "silver bullet" solution to drug control.

It is not a policy where success is measured by the number of arrests made or prisons built.

At the same meeting was a declaration signed by the representatives of Italy, the Russian Federation, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States in line with this: "Our approach must be a balanced one, combining effective enforcement to restrict the supply of drugs, with efforts to reduce demand and build recovery; supporting people to live a life free of addiction."

According to 2020 articles from the ACLU and The New York Times, Republicans and Democrats agreed that the time has come to end the war on drugs. While on the presidential campaign trail, Joe Biden claimed that he would take the necessary steps to alleviate the war on drugs and end the opioid epidemic.

On December 4, 2020, the United States House of Representatives passed a marijuana reform bill, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act (also known as the MORE Act), which decriminalized marijuana. Additionally, according to the ACLU, it "expunges past convictions and arrests, and taxes marijuana to reinvest in communities targeted by the war on drugs". However, cannabis remains a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act. While the MORE Act decriminalizes marijuana, the Schedule I classification of the substance conflicts with efforts to reframe cannabis in the socio-political view. The MORE Act was received in the Senate in December 2020.

Based on ideology from modern political scientists and economic theorists, some contend the war on drugs has persisted as a way to facilitate the deregulation of free economic markets through its methods of mass incarceration.

Domestic policy

Arrests and incarceration

According to Human Rights Watch, the War on Drugs caused soaring arrest rates that disproportionately targeted African Americans due to various factors. John Ehrlichman, an aide to Nixon, said that Nixon used the war on drugs to criminalize and disrupt black and hippie communities and their leaders.

The present state of incarceration in the U.S. as a result of the war on drugs arrived in several stages. By 1971, different steps on drugs had been implemented for more than 50 years (since 1914, 1937, etc.) with only a very small increase of inmates per 100,000 citizens. During the first nine years after Nixon coined the expression "War on Drugs", statistics showed only a minor increase in the total number of imprisoned.

After 1980, the situation began to change. In the 1980s, while the number of arrests for all crimes had risen by 28%, the number of arrests for drug offenses rose 126%. The result of increased demand was the development of privatization and the for-profit prison industry. The US Department of Justice, reporting on the effects of state initiatives, has stated that, from 1990 through 2000, "the increasing number of drug offenses accounted for 27% of the total growth among black inmates, 7% of the total growth among Hispanic inmates, and 15% of the growth among white inmates." In addition to prison or jail, the United States provides for the deportation of many non-citizens convicted of drug offenses.

In 1994, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the "War on Drugs" resulted in the incarceration of one million Americans each year. In 2008, The Washington Post reported that of 1.5 million Americans arrested each year for drug offenses, half a million would be incarcerated. In addition, one in five black Americans would spend time behind bars due to drug laws.

Federal and state policies also impose collateral consequences on those convicted of drug offenses, separate from fines and prison time, that are not applicable to other types of crime. For example, a number of states have enacted laws to suspend for six months the driver's license of anyone convicted of a drug offense; these laws were enacted in order to comply with a federal law known as the Solomon-Lautenberg amendment, which threatened to penalize states that did not implement the policy. Other examples of collateral consequences for drug offenses, or for felony offenses in general, include loss of professional license, loss of ability to purchase a firearm, loss of eligibility for food stamps, loss of eligibility for Federal Student Aid, loss of eligibility to live in public housing, loss of ability to vote, and deportation.

Sentencing disparities

In 1986, the U.S. Congress passed laws that created a 100 to 1 sentencing disparity for the trafficking or possession of crack when compared to penalties for trafficking of powder cocaine, which had been widely criticized as discriminatory against minorities, mostly blacks, who were more likely to use crack than powder cocaine. This 100:1 ratio had been required under federal law since 1986. Persons convicted in federal court of possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine received a minimum mandatory sentence of 5 years in federal prison. On the other hand, possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine carries the same sentence. In 2010, the Fair Sentencing Act cut the sentencing disparity to 18:1.

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided that the government needed to make an effort to curtail the social unrest that blanketed the country at the time. He decided to focus his efforts on illegal drug use, an approach that was in line with expert opinion on the subject at the time. In the 1960s, it was believed that at least half of the crime in the U.S. was drug-related, and this number grew as high as 90 percent in the next decade. He created the Reorganization Plan of 1968 which merged the Bureau of Narcotics and the Bureau of Drug Abuse to form the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs within the Department of Justice. The belief during this time about drug use was summarized by journalist Max Lerner in his work America as a Civilization (1957):

As a case in point we may take the known fact of the prevalence of reefer and dope addiction in Negro areas. This is essentially explained in terms of poverty, slum living, and broken families, yet it would be easy to show the lack of drug addiction among other ethnic groups where the same conditions apply.

The next two presidents, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, responded with programs that were essentially a continuation of their predecessors. Shortly after Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, he delivered a speech on the topic. Reagan announced, "We're taking down the surrender flag that has flown over so many drug efforts; we're running up a battle flag."

Then, driven by the 1986 cocaine overdose of black basketball star Len Bias,[dubious ] Reagan was able to pass the Anti-Drug Abuse Act through Congress. This legislation appropriated an additional $1.7 billion to fund the War on Drugs. More importantly, it established 29 new, mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. In the entire history of the country up until that point, the legal system had only seen 55 minimum sentences in total. A major stipulation of the new sentencing rules included different mandatory minimums for powder and crack cocaine. At the time of the bill, there was public debate as to the difference in potency and effect of powder cocaine, generally used by whites, and crack cocaine, generally used by blacks, with many believing that "crack" was substantially more powerful and addictive. Crack and powder cocaine are closely related chemicals, crack being a smokeable, freebase form of powdered cocaine hydrochloride which produces a shorter, more intense high while using less of the drug. This method is more cost-effective, and therefore more prevalent on the inner-city streets, while powder cocaine remains more popular in white suburbia. The Reagan administration began shoring public opinion against "crack", encouraging DEA official Robert Putnam to play up the harmful effects of the drug. Stories of "crack whores" and "crack babies" became commonplace; by 1986, had declared "crack" the issue of the year. Riding the wave of public fervor, Reagan established much harsher sentencing for crack cocaine, handing down stiffer felony penalties for much smaller amounts of the drug.

In August 2010, President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act into law that dramatically reduced the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine, which disproportionately affected minorities.

Commonly used illegal drugs

Commonly used illegal drugs include heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, LSD, ketamine and marijuana

Heroin is an opiate that is highly addictive. If caught selling or possessing heroin, a perpetrator can be charged with a felony and face two to four years in prison and could be fined to a maximum of $20,000.

Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug worldwide. The punishment for possession of it is less than for the possession of cocaine or heroin. In a fast-increasing number of U.S. states, the drug is being legalized. Approximately half of all adult Americans have tried marijuana.

Ecstasy, also known as MDMA, is an empathogen. Ecstasy possession is illegal within the U.S. Punishments of ecstasy possession can be up to $50,000 in fines and 3-10 years in jail.

LSD is a type of psychedelic drug that can lead to hallucinations. LSD possession is illegal in U.S. The punishment can be a fine up to $2 million and 5-40 years in prison.

Foreign interventions

Some scholars have claimed that the phrase "War on Drugs" is propaganda cloaking an extension of earlier military or paramilitary operations. Others have argued that large amounts of " drug war" foreign aid money, training, and equipment actually goes to fighting leftist insurgencies and is often provided to groups who themselves are involved in large-scale narco-trafficking, such as corrupt members of the Colombian military.

War in Vietnam

From 1963 to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, marijuana usage became common among U.S. soldiers in non-combat situations. Some servicemen also used heroin. Many of the servicemen ended the heroin use after returning to the United States but came home addicted. In 1971, the U.S. military conducted a study of drug use among American servicemen and women. It found that daily usage rates for drugs on a worldwide basis were as low as two percent. However, in the spring of 1971, two congressmen released an alarming report alleging that 15% of the servicemen in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. Marijuana use was also common in Vietnam. Soldiers who used drugs had more disciplinary problems. The frequent drug use had become an issue for the commanders in Vietnam; in 1971 it was estimated that 30,000 servicemen were addicted to drugs, most of them to heroin.

From 1971 on, therefore, returning servicemen were required to take a mandatory heroin test. Servicemen who tested positive upon returning from Vietnam were not allowed to return home until they had passed the test with a negative result. The program also offered a treatment for heroin addicts.

Elliot Borin's article "The U.S. Military Needs its Speed"-published in Wired on February 10, 2003-reports:

But the Defense Department, which distributed millions of amphetamine tablets to troops during World War II, Vietnam and the Gulf War, soldiers on, insisting that they are not only harmless but beneficial.

In a news conference held in connection with Schmidt and Umbach's Article 32 hearing, Dr. Pete Demitry, an Air Force physician and a pilot, claimed that the "Air Force has used ( Dexedrine) safely for 60 years" with "no known speed-related mishaps."

The need for speed, Demitry added "is a life-and-death issue for our military."

Operation Intercept

Operation Just Cause

On December 20, 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of the government of Panama, had been giving military assistance to Contra groups in Nicaragua at the request of the U.S. which, in exchange, tolerated his drug trafficking activities, which they had known about since the 1960s. When the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) tried to indict Noriega in 1971, the CIA prevented them from doing so. The CIA, which was then directed by future president George H. W. Bush, provided Noriega with hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as payment for his work in Latin America. When CIA pilot Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, documents aboard the plane revealed many of the CIA's activities in Latin America, and the CIA's connections with Noriega became a public relations "liability" for the U.S. government, which finally allowed the DEA to indict him for drug trafficking, after decades of tolerating his drug operations. Operation Just Cause, whose purpose was to capture Noriega and overthrow his government; Noriega found temporary asylum in the Papal Nuncio, and surrendered to U.S. soldiers on January 3, 1990. He was sentenced by a court in Miami to 45 years in prison.

Plan Colombia

As part of its Plan Colombia program, the United States government currently provides hundreds of millions of dollars per year of military aid, training, and equipment to Colombia, to fight left-wing guerrillas such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP), which has been accused of being involved in drug trafficking.

Colombian military personnel have received extensive counterinsurgency training from U.S. military and law enforcement agencies, including the School of Americas (SOA). Author Grace Livingstone has stated that more Colombian SOA graduates have been implicated in human rights abuses than currently known SOA graduates from any other country. All of the commanders of the brigades highlighted in a 2001 Human Rights Watch report on Colombia were graduates of the SOA, including the III brigade in Valle del Cauca, where the 2001 Alto Naya Massacre occurred. US-trained officers have been accused of being directly or indirectly involved in many atrocities during the 1990s, including the Massacre of Trujillo and the 1997 Mapiripán Massacre.

In 2000, the Clinton administration initially waived all but one of the human rights conditions attached to Plan Colombia, considering such aid as crucial to national security at the time.

The efforts of U.S. and Colombian governments have been criticized for focusing on fighting leftist guerrillas in southern regions without applying enough pressure on right-wing paramilitaries and continuing drug smuggling operations in the north of the country. Human Rights Watch, congressional committees and other entities have documented the existence of connections between members of the Colombian military and the AUC, which the U.S. government has listed as a terrorist group, and that Colombian military personnel have committed human rights abuses which would make them ineligible for U.S. aid under current laws.

A 2014 report by the RAND Corporation, which was issued to analyze viable strategies for the Mexican drug war considering successes experienced in Colombia, noted:

Between 1999 and 2002, the United States gave Colombia $2.04 billion in aid, 81 percent of which was for military purposes, placing Colombia just below Israel and Egypt among the largest recipients of U.S. military assistance. Colombia increased its defense spending from 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2000 to 4.19 percent in 2005. Overall, the results were extremely positive. Greater spending on infrastructure and social programs helped the Colombian government increase its political legitimacy, while improved security forces were better able to consolidate control over large swaths of the country previously overrun by insurgents and drug cartels.

It also notes that, "Plan Colombia has been widely hailed as a success, and some analysts believe that, by 2010, Colombian security forces had finally gained the upper hand once and for all."

Mérida Initiative

The Mérida Initiative is a security cooperation between the United States and the government of Mexico and the countries of Central America. It was approved on June 30, 2008, and its stated aim is combating the threats of drug trafficking and transnational crime. The Mérida Initiative appropriated $1.4 billion in a three-year commitment (2008-2010) to the Mexican government for military and law enforcement training and equipment, as well as technical advice and training to strengthen the national justice systems. The Mérida Initiative targeted many very important government officials, but it failed to address the thousands of Central Americans who had to flee their countries due to the danger they faced every day because of the war on drugs. There is still not any type of plan that addresses these people. No weapons are included in the plan.

Aerial herbicide application

Operations in Honduras

In 2012, the U.S. sent DEA agents to Honduras to assist security forces in counternarcotics operations. Honduras has been a major stop for drug traffickers, who use small planes and landing strips hidden throughout the country to transport drugs. The U.S. government made agreements with several Latin American countries to share intelligence and resources to counter the drug trade. DEA agents, working with other U.S. agencies such as the State Department, the CBP, and Joint Task Force-Bravo, assisted Honduras troops in conducting raids on traffickers' sites of operation.

Public support and opposition

United States

The War on Drugs has been a highly contentious issue since its inception. A poll on October 2, 2008, found that three in four Americans believed that the War On Drugs was failing.

The social consequences of the drug war have been widely criticized by such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union as being racially biased against minorities and disproportionately responsible for the exploding United States prison population. According to a report commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance, and released in March 2006 by the Justice Policy Institute, America's " Drug-Free Zones" are ineffective at keeping youths away from drugs, and instead create strong racial disparities in the judicial system.

In 2018, a Rasmussen Report poll found that less than 10 percent of Americans think that the War on Drugs is being won and that 75 percent found that Americans believe that America is not winning the War on Drugs.

Latin America

At a meeting in Guatemala in 2012, three former presidents from Guatemala, Mexico and Colombia said that the war on drugs had failed and that they would propose a discussion on alternatives, including decriminalization, at the Summit of the Americas in April of that year. Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina said that the war on drugs was exacting too high a price on the lives of Central Americans and that it was time to "end the taboo on discussing decriminalization". At the summit, the government of Colombia pushed for the most far-reaching change to drugs policy since the war on narcotics was declared by Nixon four decades prior, citing the catastrophic effects it had had in Colombia.

China

China's anti-drug movement can be traced back to 1909 in Shanghai with the International Opium Commission. From 1991 to 1999, China has uncovered 360 cases which involved illegal drug abuse and trafficking. In 2009, Akmal Shaikh, a British drug dealer was sentenced to death in China for smuggling 4 kg of heroin into China. Today, it is illegal to use, possess or plant cannabis in China. The punishment can be from 10-15 days detention to life sentence according to the severity.

Socioeconomic effects

Permanent underclass creation

Costs to taxpayers

According to a 2008 study published by Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron, the annual savings on enforcement and incarceration costs from the legalization of drugs would amount to roughly $41.3 billion, with $25.7 billion being saved among the states and over $15.6 billion accrued for the federal government. Miron further estimated at least $46.7 billion in tax revenue based on rates comparable to those on tobacco and alcohol: $8.7 billion from marijuana, $32.6 billion from cocaine and heroin, and $5.4 billion from other drugs.

Low taxation in Central American countries has been credited with weakening the region's response in dealing with drug traffickers. Many cartels, especially Los Zetas have taken advantage of the limited resources of these nations. 2010 tax revenue in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, composed just 13.53% of GDP. As a comparison, in Chile and the U.S., taxes were 18.6% and 26.9% of GDP respectively. However, direct taxes on income are very hard to enforce and in some cases tax evasion is seen as a national pastime.

Impact on growers

The status of coca and coca growers has become an intense political issue in several countries, including Colombia and particularly Bolivia, where former president Evo Morales, a former coca growers' union leader, promised to legalise the traditional cultivation and use of coca. Indeed, legalization efforts yielded some successes under the Morales administration when combined with aggressive and targeted eradication efforts. The country saw a 12-13% decline in coca cultivation in 2011 under Morales, who used coca growers' federations to ensure compliance with the law rather than providing a primary role for security forces.

Impact on employment

Critics note that the War on Drugs also creates an artificial shortage of workers in the labor force due to random drug testing. For example, according to the Department of Transportation, in 2020, 70,000 truck drivers were fired due to testing positive for cannabis use. This is during a period in which 70% of Americans claim to experience product shortages and delays. Additionally, the American Trucking Associations claims that the trucking industry is short 80,000 truck drivers, a number that could potentially double by 2030. Furthermore, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration increased the amount of random drug tests from 25% of the average number of driver positions to 50%, which, critics note, will result in an even greater amount of truck driver and supply shortages.

Allegations of official involvement in drug trafficking

The CIA, DEA, State Department, and several other U.S. government agencies have been alleged to have relations with various groups which are involved in drug trafficking.

CIA and Contra cocaine trafficking

Senator John Kerry's 1988 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug links concludes that members of the U.S. State Department "who provided support for the Contras are involved in drug trafficking... and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly receive financial and material assistance from drug traffickers." The report further states that "the Contra drug links include... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies."

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb published reports in the San Jose Mercury News, and later in his book Dark Alliance, claiming that: "For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." This drug ring "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles" and, as a result, "The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America."

Heroin trafficking operations involving the CIA, U.S. Navy and Sicilian Mafia

According to Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, in order to prevent Communist party members from being elected in Italy following World War II, the CIA worked closely with the Sicilian Mafia, protecting them and assisting in their worldwide heroin smuggling operations. The mafia was in conflict with leftist groups and was involved in assassinating, torturing, and beating leftist political organizers.

The National Research Council Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs published its findings in 2001 on the efficacy of the drug war. The NRC Committee found that existing studies on efforts to address drug usage and smuggling, from U.S. military operations to eradicate coca fields in Colombia, to domestic drug treatment centers, have all been inconclusive, if the programs have been evaluated at all: "The existing drug-use monitoring systems are strikingly inadequate to support the full range of policy decisions that the nation must make.... It is unconscionable for this country to continue to carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of knowing whether and to what extent it is having the desired effect." The study, though not ignored by the press, was ignored by top-level policymakers, leading Committee Chair Charles Manski to conclude, as one observer notes, that "the drug war has no interest in its own results".

Richard Davenport-Hines, in his book The Pursuit of Oblivion, criticized the efficacy of the War on Drugs by pointing out that

10-15% of illicit heroin and 30% of illicit cocaine is intercepted. Drug traffickers have gross profit margins of up to 300%. At least 75% of illicit drug shipments would have to be intercepted before the traffickers' profits were hurt.

Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru from 1990 to 2000, described U.S. foreign drug policy as "failed" on grounds that

for 10 years, there has been a considerable sum invested by the Peruvian government and another sum on the part of the American government, and this has not led to a reduction in the supply of coca leaf offered for sale. Rather, in the 10 years from 1980 to 1990, it grew 10-fold.

At least 500 economists, including Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman, George Akerlof and Vernon L. Smith, have noted that reducing the supply of marijuana without reducing the demand causes the price, and hence the profits of marijuana sellers, to go up, according to the laws of supply and demand. The increased profits encourage the producers to produce more drugs despite the risks, providing a theoretical explanation for why attacks on drug supply have failed to have any lasting effect. The aforementioned economists published an open letter to President George W. Bush stating "We urge...the country to commence an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition... At a minimum, this debate will force advocates of current policy to show that prohibition has benefits sufficient to justify the cost to taxpayers, foregone tax revenues and numerous ancillary consequences that result from marijuana prohibition."

Despite over $7 billion spent annually towards arresting and prosecuting nearly 800,000 people across the country for marijuana offenses in 2005 (FBI Uniform Crime Reports), the federally funded Monitoring the Future Survey reports about 85% of high school seniors find marijuana "easy to obtain". That figure has remained virtually unchanged since 1975, never dropping below 82.7% in three decades of national surveys. The Drug Enforcement Administration states that the number of users of marijuana in the U.S. declined between 2000 and 2005 even with many states passing new medical marijuana laws making access easier, though usage rates remain higher than they were in the 1990s according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

A 2013 study found that prices of heroin, cocaine and cannabis had decreased from 1990 to 2007, but the purity of these drugs had increased during the same time.

According to data collected by the Federal Bureau of Prisons 45.3% of all criminal charges were drug related and 25.5% of sentences for all charges last 5-10 years. Furthermore, non-whites make up 41.4% of the federal prison system's population and over half are under the age of 40. The Bureau of Justice Statistics contends that over 80% of all drug related charges are for possession rather than the sale or manufacture of drugs. In 2015 The U.S. government spent over to $25 billion on supply reduction, while allocating only $11 billion for demand reduction. Supply reduction includes: interdiction, eradication, and law enforcement; demand reduction includes: education, prevention, and treatment. The War on Drugs is often called a policy failure.

Critics of the War on Drugs have noted that it has done little to reduce the amount of deaths caused by drug use. For example, according to the CDC, drug abuse deaths in 2021 have reached an all time high of 108,000 deaths, a 15 percent increase from 2020 (93,000) which, at the time, was the highest number of deaths and a 30% increase from 2019. This is despite the fact that the Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations and prior administrations have perpetuated strict drug scheduling and mandatory minimum sentences from drug users that critics say have very little effect on reducing drug use and deaths.

The legality of the War on Drugs has been challenged on four main grounds in the U.S.

1. It is argued that drug prohibition, as presently implemented, violates the substantive due process doctrine in that its benefits do not justify the encroachments on rights that are supposed to be guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. On July 27, 2011, U.S. District Judge Mary S. Scriven ruled that Florida's legislation purporting to eliminate intent as an element of the crime of drug possession was unconstitutional. Commentators explained the ruling in terms of due process.

2. Freedom of religious conscience legally allows some (for example, members of the Native American Church) to use peyote with definite spiritual or religious motives. The sacramental use of dimethyltryptamine in the form of ayahuasca is also allowed for members of União do Vegetal. However, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment mentions no requirement for someone to be affiliated with an official church to exercise this freedom.

3. It has been argued that the Commerce Clause means that the power to regulate drug use should be state law not federal law. However, Supreme Court rulings go against this argument because production and consumption in one locality will change the price in another locality because it affects the overall supply and demand for the product and interstate price in a globalized, market economy.

4. The inequity of prosecuting the war on certain drugs but not alcohol or tobacco has also been called into question.

Alternatives

In a survey taken by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), it was found that substance abusers that remain in treatment longer are less likely to resume their former drug habits. Of the people that were studied, 66 percent were cocaine users. After experiencing long-term in-patient treatment, only 22 percent returned to the use of cocaine. Treatment had reduced the number of cocaine abusers by two-thirds. By spending the majority of its money on law enforcement, the federal government had underestimated the true value of drug-treatment facilities and their benefit towards reducing the number of addicts in the U.S.

In 2004 the federal government issued the National Drug Control Strategy. It supported programs designed to expand treatment options, enhance treatment delivery, and improve treatment outcomes. For example, the Strategy provided SAMHSA with a $100.6 million grant to put towards their Access to Recovery (ATR) initiative. ATR is a program that provides vouchers to addicts to provide them with the means to acquire clinical treatment or recovery support. The project's goals are to expand capacity, support client choice, and increase the array of faith-based and community-based providers for clinical treatment and recovery support services. The ATR program will also provide a more flexible array of services based on the individual's treatment needs.

The 2004 Strategy additionally declared a significant 32 million dollar raise in the Drug Courts Program, which provides drug offenders with alternatives to incarceration. As a substitute for imprisonment, drug courts identify substance-abusing offenders and place them under strict court monitoring and community supervision, as well as provide them with long-term treatment services. According to a report issued by the National Drug Court Institute, drug courts have a wide array of benefits, with only 16.4 percent of the nation's drug court graduates rearrested and charged with a felony within one year of completing the program (versus the 44.1% of released prisoners who end up back in prison within one year). Additionally, enrolling an addict in a drug court program costs much less than incarcerating one in prison. According to the Bureau of Prisons, the fee to cover the average cost of incarceration for Federal inmates in 2006 was $24,440. The annual cost of receiving treatment in a drug court program ranges from $900 to $3,500. Drug courts in New York State alone saved $2.54 million in incarceration costs.

Describing the failure of the War on Drugs, New York Times columnist Eduardo Porter noted:

Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard who studies drug policy closely, has suggested that legalizing all illicit drugs would produce net benefits to the United States of some $65 billion a year, mostly by cutting public spending on enforcement as well as through reduced crime and corruption. A study by analysts at the RAND Corporation, a California research organization, suggested that if marijuana were legalized in California and the drug spilled from there to other states, Mexican drug cartels would lose about a fifth of their annual income of some $6.5 billion from illegal exports to the United States.

Covert activities and foreign policy

Government agencies and laws

References

Further reading

Hari, Johann (2015). Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. London, New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-620-408902.

Blanchard, Michael; Gabriel J. Chin (1998). "Identifying the Enemy in the War on Drugs: A Critique of the Developing Rule Permitting Visual Identification of Indescript White Powders in Narcotics Prosecutions". American University Law Review (47): 557. SSRN 1128945.

Daniel Burton-Rose, The Celling of America: An Inside Look at the U.S. Prison Industry. Common Courage Press, 1998.

Stephanie R. Bush-Baskette, "The War on Drugs as a War on Black Women," in Meda Chesney-Lind and Lisa Pasko (eds.), Girls, Women, and Crime: Selected Readings. SAGE, 2004.

Chin, Gabriel (2002). "Race, the War on Drugs and the Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction". Gender, Race & Justice (6): 253. SSRN 390109.

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. New York: Verso, 1998.

Mitchell Earlywine, Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Kathleen J. Frydl, The Drug Wars in America, 1940-1973. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Kenneth B. Nunn (2002). "Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the War on Drugs Was a War on Blacks". Gender, Race & Justice. 6 (6): 381.

Tony Payan, "A War that Can't Be Won." Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 2013.

Preston Peet, Under the Influence: The Disinformation Guide to Drugs. The Disinformation Company, 2004.

Thomas C. Rowe, Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs: Money Down a Rat Hole. Binghamton, NY: Haworn Press, 2006.

Eric Schneider, "The Drug War Revisited," Berfrois, November 2, 2011.

Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1911.

Dominic Streatfeild, Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography. Macmillan, 2003.

Douglas Valentine, The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America's War on Drugs. New York: Verso, 2004.

Government and NGO reports

External links

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The war on drugs is a global campaign, led by the United States federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the United States.

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The chain gangs originated as a part of a massive road development project in the 1890s. Georgia was the first state to begin using chain gangs to work male felony convicts outside of the prison walls. Chains were wrapped around the ankles of prisoners, shackling five together while they worked, ate, and slept.

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Nov 1, 2018 ... Convict leasing was an early system of prison labor that existed from. Convict leasing existed mainly in the Southern United States from 1884 until 1928. Convicts were typically leased to operators of plantations, railroads, and coal mines. The lessees assumed all costs of housing, feeding, and overseeing the convicts.

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The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865 in the aftermath of the Civil War, abolished slavery in the United States. The 13th Amendment states: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly ...

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The 3 strike law was when they would give strikes to people for doing a crime for example if they do get caught doing a crime they would get a 1st strike which is probably some weeks in jail or so . Then if they get caught again they would get a 2nd strike then they would get put in jail for a little bit longer probably some months or so . But then once they get caught again for doing and other crime they get the 3rd strike which now they might get a higher punishment longer jail time .

This increase mass incarceration by putting people in jail after they get 3 strikes and being put for a very long time just for a little crime like carrying a little amount of drug.

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Penoge was a type of way to pay any debt that any African american slave had in other word it was a form of slavery to bring them back and work so they could pay any debt they had .
This increased mass incarceration because if anyone and any debt and didn't pay on time they would get arrested and there punishment would be  work for free or work to pay there debt .

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War On Drugs                   Declared on 1971

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War On Drugs                   Declared on 1971

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The war on drugs was a something that President Nixon said in one of his speeches . And him calling drugs number one enemy of the U.S.A . Prohibiting any type of drug use and drug sales in the U.S.A and they would have been punished of it if they had drugs.

This increased mass incarceration by taking people to jail just because they had some drugs on them or probably taking them to jail because they were hanging out wit people that were know to use drugs .

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A chain gang is a group of prisoners chained together to do menial or physically work as a form of punishment. Some punishment might include repairing buildings, building roads, or clearing land.

This also increased mass incarceration by corporation wanting more people to work and if they want more labor works to work for them they need more people to work for them.

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Convict Leasing            Started 1846-July 1 , 1928   

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Convict Leasing            Started 1846-July 1 , 1928   

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Convict Leasing was a system of penal labor practiced in the Southern United States.Convict leasing provided prisoner labor to private parties, such as plantation owners and corporations.

This increased mass incarceration by bringing in more people for little crimes and making them work for some corporations or plantations as their punishment

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13th Amendment                            Dec 6,1865

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13th Amendment                            Dec 6,1865

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The 13th Amendment which was in the United States constitution which abolished slavery and any involuntary servitude .

This increased mass Incarceration by changing the way incarceration system work from taking them to jail and making them work like if they where slaves again .