retaliation to America’s widespread drug addiction, our leaders decided in a very retaliatory, military inspired way to symbolically “double our attack efforts” by doubling the penalties under the Harrison Act. Officials were so dumbfounded by the fact that these deterrences failed to resolve our nation’s addiction to drugs that no one stopped to consider the possibility that people could not quit. While our nation’s people managed to find a less damaging vice for their pleasure in social marijuana use, our government likely experienced fears of the drug “outbreak” spreading. Stuck in the habit of simply imposing restrictions, and taxes on drug use, our government was eager to regulate marijuana use. Enter Harry Anslinger. Anslinger was in and of himself a junkie. There have been many reports claiming that he, among others, was addicted to escalating this war on drugs. He is the one responsible for the exaggerated terror tales and misinformation that spanned our nation. Clearly, these actions are ones of an irrational nature, as are those of an addict burglarizing a home in order to afford his fix to feel “normal” again. One wonders where the “point of no return” was passed, and how the United States Government could be so unsuccessful at their campaign against these “Evil Drugs.”As a policy analyst for “Stop the Insanity,” a Washington, DC lobbying group, after reviewing out government’s past actions in fighting the drug war, I do agree, that the state of drug use became an unsightly one, and a pressing problem for our government to deal with. I do feel, however, that the United States has acted erroneously throughout its history of drug legislation, both in actions causing the problem, and in their efforts to contain it. Because of their faulty reasoning, our nation’s past drug restrictions were destined for failure from th...
