As you become an adult, you are afforded certain freedoms. In America, once you turn 18 years old, you are allowed to buy cigarettes and go to war. As you turn 21, you are allowed to drink. You are trusted to be a responsible adult and have autonomy over your life. The right to drink alcohol, go to war, and smoke cigarettes are rites of passage that is a symbol of the transition from young adulthood to adulthood. The same should be true with drug use. The federal and state government have no right to destroy the lives of people who use drugs or do anything that does not directly impact the lives of others. Most drug users are recreational users and have full control of their lives. In this proposal, I will explain what the War on Drugs is, its impact on America, how the criminalization of drugs delays development of young adults, has destroyed African American communities intentionally, and how legalizing, taxing, and regulating all drugs will solve those problems. Those reasons lead me to believe that all drugs must be legalized, taxed, and regulated and every adult over the age of 18 has the right to purchase whatever drug they so please.

The War on Drugs

In 1971 President Richard Nixon proclaimed, “America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive” (Friedersdorf). The narrative for the War on Drugs was that drug use leads to crime. In order to lower the crime rate, people who are drug users must be jailed. As it turns out, the War on Drugs had nothing to do with that at all. According to Richard Nixon’s top aide, John Ehrlichman:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. (LoBianco)

Click here to continue (PLEASE WATCH ALL 3 VIDEOS BELOW. They cover the Drug War and addiction in ways I did not cover it in this study.)