War on Drugs and the War on Terror

As a criminology major, you hear all about the “War on Drugs” and what it did to this country, similarly, after taking this class (Global Security Studies) the “War on Terror” is talked about in a similar tone. A tone of “if we could do this over, we would do it differently,” both from my Professors to those in the world that had a real effect on the creation of these “Wars”. Both of the “Wars” have ruined millions of lives, both cost millions of dollars and both were created with the best of intentions in mind. The leaders of our country in the 1970s and 80s, and the leaders of our country in the early 2000s would have never realized the impact of their choices on our country and those we came after.

            At home in the “War on Drugs”, there were increased penalties for even small amounts of once legalized drugs, increasing the number of prisoners in the U.S. astronomically. There were several laws passed during the War on Drugs, many of which, especially in the south, that have yet to be reverted. Including the three strikes laws, that once you commit your third crime you could be sent to jail for 25 years to life, even for three different cases of shoplifting. Also, there are mandatory minimums that if you caught with a certain drug or amount, you will be sentenced to a minimum penalty, usually about a year in prison or more. All these added up to make the United States have the most prisoners in the world in our criminal justice system. Lastly, countless other industries flourished with increased incarceration rate, especially the private prison industry, which essentially treats prisoners as a number to keep up to then help keep up profits made from the taxpayer’s dollar.

            While in the early 2000s, after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the leaders of the free world had to react somehow, and with the idea that Afghanistan and Iraq where the main culprits of the attacks. We decided to mobilize and try to stop anyone and anything that may, or may not have, have a relationship with the people that committed the attacks on U.S. soil. As a result, thousands of young men and women were sent overseas with a “plan” to attack and destroy the terrorist network made by Osama bin Laden. No to mention, the rapid increase in the federal budget towards the defense industry, costing the taxpayers (again) for something that at the time might have seemed like a good dead, but after the fact was really a waste of time, money and people. Each year we fought the war, the national debt would keep going up to the point we are at now, a seemingly insurmountable number. Another “war” another casualty that directly affects the United States populace.  

In the years since the “end” of the war we still have men in the middle east and our leaders now may want to send more men back to help with another terrorist organization, that did, in part, spread because of the death of Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group. The “War on Drugs” has pretty much ended and even in some states, marijuana is legalized. Representing a massive shift in the opinion of the population. Yet much of the south is stuck in its old ways, with its old laws that are affecting a disproportionate amount of one group of people. Something, like the overcrowding of our prison system, that could be changed for the better with one stroke of a pen from a top legislator in our county. All in all, “Wars” in this country always seem like a great idea at the time, but by the end they should never have happened, war is bad.