Boot Legger Version 2.0 (Legalize Drugs) Essays - Drug Control Law

Boot Legger Version 2.0 (Legalize Drugs) I go to Tulane and received an A+ on this paper. You can't tell if a boy or girl wrote it either. Good Luck Bootlegger: Version 2.0 ?Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance? for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and make a crime out of things that are not a crime. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principle upon which our government was founded? Abraham Lincoln On January 16, 1920 the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified by thirty-six states and became part of the Constitution. The intention of this new amendment was to lower alcohol consumption by Americans. At the time each American consumed on average thirty gallons of alcohol a year.[1] This new amendment took away the license to do business from the brewers, distillers, and the wholesale and retail sellers of alcoholic beverages. Alcohol consumption did taper off somewhat at the beginning of prohibition only to slowly rise back to pre-prohibition levels shortly before the end of the movement which took place on December 5,1933. Not only was the goal of prohibition never achieved, but it raised organized crime to levels of power unimaginable before and seriously disrupted both the legitimacy and revenue of the government. Just as Prohibition incited many unsavory activities, so has the War on Drugs. The easiest way to show the connection between these to movements is an excerpt from an article pertaining to Prohibition in America during the 1920's: Bootleggers ran wild. Professional robberies began as soon as Prohibition did. Territories were divided by groups of organized crime that became the scum known as the Mafia. The territories were decided by violence and death, both against each other, as well as those in the public who may/may not have been innocent.[2] Extract a few words from the excerpt and replace them with the words drug dealers, War on Drugs, and gangs and there is a description of America's current situation. The War on Drugs intends to rid America of drugs, hard and soft, just as prohibition attempted to rid America of drink. The arguments against the War on Drugs are the same arguments that persuaded politicians sixty years ago to end Prohibition. Just as the movement to rid America of alcohol failed, so will the War on Drugs because social engineering works no better today than it did then. The War on Drugs has given birth to many of the modern day evils. The most widespread repercussion of the War on Drugs is the crime rate. ? In 1990, the number of people sent to state and federal prisons for drug offenses exceeded the number of offenders sent to prison for violent crimes?. Drug offenders currently make up 62 percent of the federal inmate population, up from 22 percent in 1980.?[3] Add to this the fact that most of these prisoners are nonviolent offenders put there under mandatory minimum sentencing laws and the explanation for why this country is running out of prison space should be readily apparent. The second most prevalent, as well as disheartening, result of this movement is the death of innocent victims. The support for this result can be found in the obituary section of the daily newspaper or on the five o'clock news. Even the smallest of towns have been afflicted with death due to drugs. Back-alley heroin and basement-lab manufactured amphetamines present the same problem as moonshine alcohol; it might be the real thing but it might also kill anyone who takes it because the manufacturer didn't know what they were doing. The huge profits from drugs are also the major motivation for ?turf wars? between gangs, many of whom seem to have fairly bad aim and hit innocent bystanders as often as each other. To add insult to injury, the greatest backlash of the War on Drugs is the economic and financial damage. In the Cato Policy Analysis No.121 it states: A common estimate of annual black market drug sales would be about $80 billion.[55] Because the black market price of drugs is inflated at the very least 10-fold over what the legal price would be , 90 percent of this