America’s Longest War – the War on Drugs

Abstract

The problem of using illicit drugs in the United States, which is the largest drug consumer in the world, is an important and controversial subject. The prohibition, which aimed to eliminate alcohol from the American society, ended in a failure. In the case of federal drug legislation, the first acts appeared exactly one hundred years ago. The next, intense phase began in 1970 during the presidency of Richard Nixon, when the war on drugs has been declared. Until this day, the number of acts aimed to control drug abuse has risen, with the United States also very actively involved in war on drugs on the international arena, but at the same time the number of drug users has not decreased. More and more critical voices appear, for instance in War on Drugs: Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which directly states that the war on drugs is a failure. Even though a couple of American states have legalized the sale of marijuana, which belongs to soft drugs regarded as less harmful in comparison to hard drugs, the longest American’ war cannot end after introducing numerous laws and all the costs connected with it.