Lecture Notes- Persuasive Essay On The War On Drugs PDF

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Persuasive Speech Introduction Good morning class! Slide 1 – Let me ask you this question: What has the Drug War done to the world? Look at the murder and chaos in Mexico, Central America and so many other parts of the planet, the global black market is estimated to 300 billion dollars a year, prisons packed in the United States and elsewhere, police and military drawn into an unwinnable war that violates basic rights. And ordinary citizens just hoping they don't get caught in the crossfire. Meanwhile people use more drugs than ever. Slide 2 - Today I will persuade you that we should stop the Drug War. My reasons are: First, the war on drugs is insanely expensive Next, tax revenue from regulated drug markets would be a government windfall Last, becoming a criminal has never been more profitable Body MPI - First, let’s examine why the war on drugs is insanely expensive for the US. Slide 3 - In the past 40 years, The US has spent more than $1,5 trillion enforcing drug laws. Annually, the US spends at least $15 billion a year on drug law enforcement. Yet, the US drug addiction rate stays stable. The Department of Justice says that the illegal drug market in the U.S. is dominated by 900,000 criminally active gang members affiliated with 20,000 street gangs in more than 2,500 cities; and that Mexican drug cartels now directly control illegal drug markets in at least 230 American cities. Consequently, one out of every 100 American adults is behind bars in jail or prison. Actually, 40 years ago, 38,000 people were imprisoned in the US for drug-related offenses. Today, that number stands at over 500,000, that is over 13 times the amount in 40 years. Let’s look at some statistics: The U.S. holds nearly 5% of the world’s population, yet the US has nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners were half of the those prisoners are there for drug related crimes. This results in an estimated productivity loss of $40 billion a year for the US. And listen to this: the U.S. has more people in prison for drug-related crimes than the entire EU has prisoners. Filling prisons with drug users has done nothing to curb the multi-billion dollar business.

But, the US is not only spending billions of dollars to imprison drug criminals, the costs to the public health system of unsafe, unregulated drugs are ridiculous. The Alternative World Drug Report puts it this way: “Drugs bought through criminal networks are often cut with contaminants; dealers sell more potent and risky products; and high-risk behaviors such as injecting and needle sharing in unsupervised and unhygienic environments are commonplace. The resulting increases in hospital visits and emergency room admissions for infections, overdose, and poisonings, combined with increased treatment requirement for HIV/AIDS, hepatitis and tuberculosis, can place a substantial additional burden on already squeezed healthcare budgets.” The Drug War is so expensive that if global drug trade were a country, it would have one of the top 20 economies in the world. So, what if the US regulated the drug markets and got tax revenue? This takes me to the next point MPII - Tax revenue from regulated drug markets would be a government windfall For example: in the Netherlands, where some drugs are sold in so called “coffee shops” the retailing of drugs deliver more than 300 million dollars in tax revenues to the government every year. In the United States, if illegal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco, they would yield $46.7 billion in tax revenue. A study says legalizing drugs would save the U.S. about $41 billion a year in enforcing the drug laws. Three out of four American voters say the “war on drugs” is a failure. In a survey by the National Association of Chiefs of Police, 82 % of police chiefs and sheriffs said that the War on Drugs has not been successful in reducing drug use. Despite being the birthplace of the global War on Drugs and having some of the harshest drug penalties, the U.S. has the highest marijuana and cocaine use rates in the world. Without black-market profits, criminal drug networks would almost certainly shrink. The ability of drug cartels to bribe officials, violate human rights, and cripple the rule of law would be undermined if they suddenly lost their ability to profit from drugs on the black market. MPIII – Because, becoming a criminal has never been more profitable. This leads to my third point. It’s basic supply and demand. Not only do criminals get paid to take on more risk, but also the completely unregulated playing field allows for insane price markups. So while there is

a 413% mark-up from farm gate to consumer in the price of a legal drug or coffee, the percentage price mark-up for an illegal drug such as heroin can run into multiple thousands. Numerous experts have criticized The War on Drugs as the wrong approach to deal with the problem. They argue that by favoring domestic law endorsement in instead of treatment, the government has focused on enforcement instead of dealing with treatment as a social problem. In addition, by making drugs illegal rather than regulating them, The War on Drugs creates a highly profitable black market, increasing levels of violent crime. President Trump has taken power at a turning point in the drug policy debate. A majority of Americans now favor marijuana legalization, which is hitting the pockets of Mexican smugglers and will do so even more when California starts issuing licenses to sell recreational cannabis next year. In an article I read a drug smuggler was asked whether the border wall promised by President Trump will stop smugglers, he answered: “This is never going to stop, neither the narco trafficking nor the illegals,” “There will be more tunnels. More holes. If it doesn’t go over, it will go under.” When asked “What will change?” he said: “The fees that criminal networks charge to transport people and contraband across the border. Every time the wall goes up, so do smuggling profits.” Violence and the organized crime associated with the drug trades are getting worse, not better, despite the current policies. The alarming power of the drug cartels leads to a criminalization of politics. Stopping the demand for the smugglers’ services actually hits them in their pockets. Otherwise, they will just keep getting richer. Transition: But, now you may say: A. The Drug War provides and creates business and job opportunities B. The Drug War is helpful to criminals who rely on it for their livelihood. C. And by adding consensual activities like drug use, the police have much more to do. Transition: But, Conclusion As I just told you: The war on drugs is insanely expensive Tax revenue from regulated drug markets would be a government windfall And, becoming a criminal has never been more profitable

Where there is a demand, there will be a supply. Knock out one source and another inevitably emerges. People tend to think of prohibition as the ultimate form of regulation when in fact it represents the abdication of regulation with criminals filling the void. Which is why putting criminal laws and police front and center in trying to control a dynamic global drug supply market is a recipe for disaster. Action plan: And what we really need to do is to bring the underground drug markets as much as possible aboveground and regulate them as intelligently as we can to minimize both the harms of drugs and the harms of prohibitionist policies....