The Prosperity of Peace: Ending The War on Marijuana

Since 1971, the United States of America has been in an open “War on Drugs”; as the then current President Nixon so named it.  Since that declaration of war, trillions of tax dollars have been spent by the various levels of government and hundreds of thousands of lives have been ruined or lost according to the Uniform Crime Reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (Uniform)  So what progress has been made after so many causalities have been tallied?  In 1991, twenty years after the start of the war, 11.2 percent of young people reported to having used an illicit drug. Fourteen years later in 2005, 16.3 of the same age group had reported prior usage. This does not seem like progress but rather an ineffective use of the approximate 27 billion dollars spent by the federal government in a campaign to prevent the use of illicit drugs by young people. (Fisher)  In addition to this, according to the National Survey on Drug use and Health (NSDUH) reports that there were 2.1 million persons who had used marijuana for the time within the past year, and that 62.2 percent of that 2.1 million were under the age of 18. (NSDUH)  The data since 2002 have been relatively consistent in that they show very little influx in the number of first time users and their age. (NSDUH)  These statistics from NSDUH relate solely to marijuana, a “soft drug”, and not to more addictive and deadly illicit drugs such as cocaine and heroin, which are obviously much more of a threat to the health of the general public than soft drugs like marijuana.  According to the Drug Enforcement Administration however, the addiction level, economic prosperity of dealers, and priority of level for seizure for hard drugs are all higher than that of Marijuana. (DEA) Clearly the drug war in America is not making the progress that every administration since and including Nixon’s has hoped.

Now despite the addiction and dependency level of hard drugs being significantly higher than that of marijuana, marijuana is reported to have the “highest dependence or abuse rate” in the past several years according to a number of federal surveys such as NSDUH.  (NSDUH)  However, the key term to understand in those statistics is “abuse”.  Drug abuse is defined as using any drug that is illegal.  This term tends to give the image of any drug user as being an addict in an alleyway who would commit any crime and stoop to any low in order to satisfy his cravings.  Obviously, such a broad and negative term is used in such a way in order to smear the image of drugs and drug users by the government.  An effective wartime tactic if I do say so myself, but misleading nonetheless.