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.