eir start.The first mistake made by America in its drug policy was basing it initially on ulterior motives. There is no doubt that the first step in drug restriction targeted the Chinese. There is an old adage, “If it ain’t broke, then don’t try to fix it.” Our government stepped into a situation that caused little to no harm to American Society, and acted based on a social contempt, something completely unrelated to what was being infringed upon. This, of course, led to other problems, and after that, incompetent reasoning stepped in, thus furthering the problems caused by narcotics addiction.The second fault in America’s past drug policy is the fact that narcotics addiction was treated as a war. The truth in the matter is that once addicted to a narcotic, one must literally maintain a constant input of these drugs in order to survive. This is the reason that drug prices escalated to such high figures. By depriving our citizens of a regulated supply of their narcotic, our government forced them to ingest dirty products with uncertain ingredients, thus causing overdoses. By making the act of using drugs illegal, users had to resort to seedy locations and use unclean methods of administering their fixes. This one act is responsible for the violence, and disease resulting from drug addiction. Had our government looked at this problem as an illness, rather than a war, the outcome of our nations drug affliction would surely have been different. Had this train of thought been present, perhaps a program to manufacture narcotics in order to sustain addicts in their daily lives would have been instated rather than a system of punishment. Throughout the past, our government has focused on punishing addicts based on often-regretted actions taken at one point in their lives. This downward spiral is the reason that our government’s attempts of curing America’s drug addiction were predestined to...
