1970's Drug Abuse

Therefore, the start of this increase in drug abuse and widespread illness is due to the condemning ignorance in which the United States is responsible for. If there would have been doctors involved that would have alerted the people of the great dangers of drug abuse and cocaine and crack cocaine addiction as doctors Smith and Wesson tried to warn the country. The 1960s drug use were characterized as “youthful rebellion.”It gained the attention of the President Nixon and therefore he established the D.E.A. through executive order and declared the war on drugs shortly thereafter. During the 1970s the D.E.A. focused most of its efforts on other drugs due to an assessment on the extent of drug abuse in the United States and it read, “all drugs …show more content…
and U.S. Customs Service took their attention from cocaine and marijuana focused on heroin trafficking, cocaine was largely ignored during the 1970s allowing it and marijuana cultivation to proliferate quietly in Latin America while the rest of the United States was unaware the doom they would have to face. During the start of the 1970s The D.E.A. had cracked down of many cases of heroin throughout the world, since it is considered the most trafficked narcotic in the world. Mexico was one of the major sources of both heroin and marijuana to the United States. Through 1972 to 1976 a shift in the market structures of drug smuggling had mad Mexico dominator of the heroin trade and a steady supplier of marijuana to the United States. Marijuana was also being supplied by the infamous country, Colombia. Back home, in the United States many drug criminals were being put to trail, as was Leroy “Nicky” Barnes, an addict who became a multi-millionaire drug lord. Not many policies in the United States targeted much of the problem that was starting to grow out of hand, which was the problem with drug abuse. It was until the 1980s, after President Nixon and President Jimmy Carter had been out of office, and President Ronald Reagan was appointed as new commander in chief of this drug war. President Reagan began mass incarcerations illicit drug users. The number of people in jail for non-violent drug crimes had escalated by 800 percent. By this time the …show more content…
One of the attempts of the United States to stop influx of smuggled marijuana from Mexico was under “Operation Intercept” in 1969. The operation was made because of belief that Marijuana was being streamlined into the United States from Mexico and it was to blame. This policy of supply drug control is one that the United States adopted for many countries. The United States adopted a policy of containment rather than treatment. Another strategy used by the United States was the aerial spraying of drug crops in Mexico. Both the success in Operation Intercept and in aerial eradication were short lived as more crops and drugs would be cultivated again and replaced. The main reason for these policies that were more offensive toward other countries, rather than reflective, was because politicians during this time believed getting rid of the drugs at the cultivations source would be the least costly option rather than brainstorming on plans to improve the citizens back home who were losing themselves more to poverty and misery due to the consumption of drugs. Also most of the aid that was budgeted for the United States to use on the attempt to diminish drug trafficking abroad was not used to fund international organizations against drugs. Only 3 percent of this budget