The War on Drugs: Trigger to a Violent Society

For many Americans that are decedents of Mexican families, such as myself, the drug war has affected us personally more than most other Americans; many of us have some family residing in Mexico. The violence that has been escalating recently in Mexico makes many of us nervous for our families in Mexico. However, it should not only be Americans with family in Mexico that should be nervous about the escalating violence. The situation in Mexico has clearly demonstrated that the war on drugs has been a disastrous failure. If the American government continues the status quo, then Mexico serves as a glimpse of what may happen in the near future in the United States; escalating violence with many innocent human lives lost. The United States should change its drug policies for the protection of American civilians.

The United States incarcerates people at a rate four times higher than the Netherlands, a country that has much more liberal drug laws than the United States. It is also much more expensive to incarcerate a drug addict than it is to give them treatment. If a person is given a misdemeanor for marijuana possession, even if it is for their own personal use, they are considered an addict for life by the government. Such a misdemeanor makes it impossible to get a student loan, a job with the city, state, or federal government, and it makes it near impossible to get a well paying, decent job. This makes a person that committed such a “crime” to become an unproductive member of society, therefore they would have to find alternative ways to survive. If this person becomes desperate, they may turn to a life of crime and violence. This is why the current drug policies of the American government have been such failures.

The demand for drugs is within the United States. Due to much of the violence, the escalating war in Mexico, and the cost of trafficking drugs past the border, some of the Mexican cartels have decided to begin drug production operations within the United States. The Mexican cartels have shown that they are ruthless and violent and that nothing will stop them. Now that they have began some of their drug production operations within the United States, it is only a matter of time before the violence begins.

I would rather live in free and peaceful society, than one in where my personal freedom is limited within a violent atmosphere. It is time for us to demand change, and search for more peaceful and humane alternatives to the forty year old War on Drugs.