War on Drugs: a Criticism

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War on Drugs The ?War on Drugs? is an irresponsible, uneducated, and racist movement that diverts attention from severe social problems, legitimates the virtual abandonment of minorities and lower classes, and validates a vast expansion of U.S. state power as well as a consequent erosion of civil liberties. Above all it is an outdated policy that has proven itself inefficient and a failure. The War on Drugs is an ?all-out offensive? strategy against the non-medical use of certain illegal drugs. Its roots can be traced back to the 1880?s, but it was officially instituted by Richard Nixon in 1971. The War on Drugs has many precursor elements in the form of laws aimed at limiting, regulating and prohibiting the use of specific substances by certain minorities. According to Judge Gray, original drug laws were ??fundamentally racist laws aimed at perceived threats to white women? from the use of cocaine, marijuana, and opium, by black, Mexican and Chinese men respectively.? Each type of drug prohibited was directly associated with a minority class, and was used as the basis for discrimination against these specific minorities. First, in 1875 San Francisco passed a city ordinance that outlawed the smoking of opium in opium dens. The justification for this was that ?white women and young men of respectable family were getting lured into these opium-smoking dens, where they were ruined morally or otherwise.? This however is a fictional statement without any merit or proof behind it. The true underlying reasons behind the movement of this law were fears that Chinese men and other railroad workers would seduce white women with this drug. Around this same time a concoction of opium and alcohol was being marketed under the name Laudanum. It was sold mainly as a cough medicine, but it had various other uses. The main difference between opium and Laudanum was the mode
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