The war on drugs cannot be won, it is a waste of time and costing our country millions of dollars and only to result in failure. The United States faces a major problem with the drug war and their approach of criminalizing the use of drugs hasn 't helped them fix the issue. President Richard Nixon declared the government 's war on drugs forty years ago and all their efforts still amount to high drug usage and a dangerous drug trade. The United States policymakers assumed that a forceful law enforcement towards drug use would diminish the market for it. This was not the case of course because the large-scale drug market has grown vastly over the years through a rise in organized crime. For over forty years since the declaration of the war on drugs by President Nixon global efforts to curb the drug trade and punish drug users has failed and instead brought upon wide scale violence and organized crime. Having the use of drugs be illegal hurts our country. Each and every drug offender convicted has to go to prison where they are housed and fed at the expense of taxpayers. In the article Numbers Tell of Failure in Drug War …show more content…
Prices continue to stay low even if the supply is cut short through drug seizures. The drug busts actually help the drug cartels because for the time being the price of the drug increases and is more profitable. This alone indicates how well the war on drugs is being handled by the United States and Mexican governments. Most of the drug activity is of the drug trade in Mexico and the cartels smuggle these illicit drugs into the United States. These two countries are not getting it done because we constantly see the violence that results from the drug wars. In the article, A Lucrative War written by Ben Enrenreich (2010), a freelance journalist and author states that, "the bloodshed is simply the result of heightened competition" (p. 580). Drug cartels, many located in Mexico, are extremely powerful within their business and they have been successful for many years. The black market for the illegal drugs is such a profitable market that these drug cartels are so wealthy that they can bribe officers and government officials to get their way. The drug trade and smuggling by the Mexican drug cartels must be stopped to ever end the problems that come with