Drug Use Enforcement in the USA Essay

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Drug Trafficking

The author of this report is to answer a few questions relating to drug trafficking. The primary focus of the questions and answers will be on two sources in particular, those being the movie Traffic and the class text authored by Thio, Calhoun and Conyers. The questions include references to the links between drugs and crime, the roles and events surrounding certain people in Traffic and so forth. There will be references other than the two mentioned above throughout the answers, as is required by the parameters of the assignment. While many depict drug use as a victimless crime, this is far from being true and the scope of the people that can be affected by drug use, drug dealing and drug trafficking literally knows no bounds or limits.

Analysis

There is a heavy amount of examples of how drug use and crime are related, but the author will stick to the three requested by the assignment. One way in which drug use leads to crime is that addicts will rob and steal, among other things, to feed their habit. Of course, many people that become addicted are jobless or they become jobless due to the problems caused by drug use such as being high at work, missing work in general and lower performance. Once someone loses their job yet they are addicted to something like crack, methamphetamine or heroin, they will resort to stealing from relatives, stealing from strangers, robbing stores, shoplifting and so forth. Another example of how drug use leads to crime is that many people feed their habit by dealing. Many times, a user will deal for a bigger drug dealer. They will peel off some of the product for themselves and then sell the rest so as to pay back the dealer. A third example of how drug use leads to crime is that sometimes the users like the one just mentioned will use up too much of the product and will not be able to pay back their dealer. Dealers often respond to this with violence, up to and including killing or otherwise harming the person who didn't pay up. After all, they have to make an example of that person or non-payment will become more rampant (Thio, Calhoun & Conyers 2013). An example of the above in the film is Caroline prostituting herself so as to feed her habit (IMDB 2015).

As for the second question, this relates to coercion perpetration and sex as portrayed in the film and discussed on the Thio textbook. An example of this as described in the text and shown in the film would include when Caroline is found by Wakefield semi-conscious having sex with an older man as part of her prostituting. The prostitution by itself is not legal. However, the fact that Caroline is not even fully lucid makes the act in progress another crime. Indeed, having sex with a person that is drunk and/or high is a crime in all instances (Thio, Calhoun & Conyers 2013; IMDB 2015). As described by Abbey (2011), most such perpetration involves alcohol and the victims are almost always women or girls. Alcohol-induced coercions are quite common but knowing just how often they happen is hard to pin down given that many instances go unreported or are reported well after the fact (Abbey 2011). However, some studies have tried to nail down the rates. Indeed, Ybarra all found that, from a sample of 354 sexually experienced people, that about two thirds of women and a little over half of men have been involved, in one manner or another, in a sexually coercive experience (Ybarra et al. 2012).

The third question asks about the role of Caroline Whitfield in the movie, how her actions are related to strain theory and why she acted the way she did. Of course, strain theory is the idea that social structures influence people to commit crime (Thio, Calhoun & Conyers 2013). Caroline, as mentioned before, becomes hooked on drugs and denigrates herself by becoming a prostitute (not to mention a rape victim) due to the fact that she is on drugs. Her drug use obviously started of her own volition but the pull of the drug and the social structures that feed her habit lead her on a downward spiral. She's on drugs and she is thus not rational in her actions or decision making but the drug dealers that sell product to her do not care about anything but money (IMDB 2015).

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As far as Robert Wakefield as depicted in Traffic, one question to be answered is whether he exhibits elite deviance. Of course, elite deviance is when someone engages in behavior that is in violation of standards or ethics whilst acting as part of a government entity (Thio, Calhoun & Conyers 2013). For the most part, he is not an elite deviant in that he does not resort to some of the depravity otherwise depicted in the film. However, there is a time where he is the drug czar and is prosecuting a war on drugs while he knows full well that his daughter is one of the addicts involved in said drug war and he treats her entirely differently than he does the people he is assailing and prosecuting while doing his job. He eventually realizes how conflicted and wrong this is and steps down from his post while stating that prosecuting a drug war would involve his family and thus he cannot be part of that apparatus (IMDB 2015).

As for whether Helena Ayala is part of the problem or not and/or just as guilty as her husband, it does not start out that way but things change quite a bit. Even if she is doing so in reaction to her child being threatened, Helena crosses the line when she orders a hit on Eduardo Ruiz. She does this because she knows the trial would be a non-starter if he is no longer alive. Later on, she becomes even more culpable when she cooperates with Obregon to form plastic rabbit dolls that are not detectable by the DEA or other drug enforcement entities. In short, she starts off as an innocent bystander but she is absolutely no longer innocent from the point that she orders the hit and it just gets worse from there (IMDB 2015).

The last question asks for two more sources and a summation of the moral of the story told in Traffic and the types of deviance that exist in society. Lastly, there will be a synthesis of what it all means. The author of this report would offer two lessons. First, treating all drug users as criminals and in the same manner is not a workable or realistic solution. Indeed, to treat Caroline from Traffic in the same manner as the drug dealers and traffickers in the movie is just silly. The author of this report is talking not just about the general illegalities but also about how to deal with them in general. The Obregons and, later on, Ms. Ayala are criminals and should be thrown under the jail. However, Caroline's situation is entirely different. Throwing her in jail would be a waste of resources and the loss of a human life. Indeed, jails are treated like the asylums and mental institutions of years gone by. That being said, users can be social deviants as well. Caroline resorted to self-degradation to feed her habit. However, others (as noted earlier in this report) actively rob and steal and this can lead to people being hurt, traumatized or even killed. People like that who refuse to get clean or at least stop being violent deserve to be in prison (Hefland 2015).

The other lesson to be learned is that prosecuting a drug war as the street level just does not work. The supply has to be cut off or the war will rage on. At present, the United States government either will not or cannot cut off the supply. Further, there are some drugs like marijuana and methamphetamine that are produced domestically in heaps and bunches and thus simply securing the border will not do enough. Marijuana users are usually fairly harmless and the patterns of Colorado and Washington may be worth looking into. However, hard drugs like heroin and crack should be attacked hard but at the dealer/distribution level. Drug addicts and the mentally ill in prison should get help if they want it rather than simply being warehoused (Williams 2015).

Conclusion

In the end, there are no easy answers to the drug war. Even some casual/lower-level users will present problems but this does not mean cracking down on all users is a good idea. With the exception of legalized marijuana, however, any embracing or acceptance of hard drug use should never happen because the addiction and social consequences of those drugs cannot be contained. Unfortunately, this currently seems to be the case even though the drugs are illegal.....

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