War on Drugs: A Losing Research Paper

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This is the case in the other stages in the supply chain and therefore offers an opportunity for someone to make more money while involved in the drug business (Castaneda, 1999).

In the 70s it was said that beefed up law enforcement could effectively seal the southern border of the United States border and stop drugs from entering its borders. It is for this reason that the United States uses patrols, checkpoints, sniffer dogs, cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, drone aircraft and up to approximately 1,000 miles of steel beam, concrete walls and heavy mesh which stretches from California to Texas. This has been an expensive precautionary measure which has unsuccessfully attempted to stop the drugs getting within the borders of the United States. Approximately 330 tons of cocaine, 20 tons of heroin and 110 tons of methamphetamine are sold within the borders of the United States each year. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, almost all of it is brought in across its borders. More marijuana is sold and it is hard to know how much of it is domestically grown including vast fields which are run by Mexican drug cartels in the United States national parks.

Another reason for the failure of the war on drugs is dealers who have been caught have overwhelmed the United States justice systems and elsewhere in the world. In the United States for instance, prosecutors declined to file charges in 7,482 drug cases in the previous year simply due to lack of time (Neal 162). There have been thousands of arrests of suspected associates of Mexican drug gangs made by the United States and then turned over to local prosecutors who have been unable to make the charges stick due to lack of evidence. This result in the suspects being at times acquitted, deported or released and the United States Justice Department is unable to keep track of what happens to all of the suspects.

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Traffickers in Mexico exploit a broken justice system where by investigators often fail to collect evidence that is convincing and when they do, they may get assassinated. Suspects sometimes have confessions beaten out of them by police who are most of the time underpaid and frustrated. As a result, judges, who no longer turn a blind eye to this kind of abuse, release the suspects due to exasperation. Traffickers in the United States and Mexico continue to operate even while in prison and order assassinations and also arranging distribution of their product even while in solitary confinement. In Mexico, prisoners are at times able to buy their way out of prison.

Drug related violence spans Mexico with approximately 2,600 people being killed in cartel-related violence in 2009 in Ciudad Juarez which is the epicenter of such violence. This makes the city which has approximately 1 million inhabitants across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas amongst the deadliest in the world. Nobody has been prosecuted for the homicide related to organized crime (AP).

Another reason for the war on drugs being a losing one is the money that it generates. The drug industry accounts for about 1 per cent of the world's commerce while generating $320 billion annually. Mexico's economy, 10 per cent of it is built from proceeds from drugs. Another reason for the failure is that for each drug dealer put in jail or killed, there is usually someone else in line to replace them due to the money involved being very good.

In conclusion, I think it is only right to say that due to the public policy not working, it is important for a different approach to be taken instead. The current policy in place is not having an effect on drug use and trafficking but it is at the same time costing the public a fortune (AP).

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