Dear Madame/Mr. President:

One of the biggest duties the President is faced with is keeping the American people safe. The war on drugs has attempted to protect U.S. citizens safe but has ultimately failed in keeping narcotics and their harmful effects away from the public. The war on drugs has been a wasted effort and instead of continuing the current course of action, the best way to stop drug abuse would be to spend less money prosecuting offenders and more money educating the public about the dangers of abusing drugs.

1 in 28 kids in the United States have a parent in jail on drug related charges. Not only can this cause kids to fall into incarceration themselves, many of the arrests in drug charges are against recreational drug users or those that have small amounts of drugs with no intent to sell. That statistic is very disappointing when considering that $50 billion is spent on drug related issues, with that kind of money being spent one would believe that the more dangerous drug dealers would be the ones being arrested instead of those involved with minor drug charges.

Another one of the problems with the war on drugs is that the large parts of the drug wars is racially motivated, as early anti-drug campaigns worked to make marijuana illegal by stating that African American men who had smoked marijuana became violent towards white women. As recent as the 1970’s when president Nixon first declared the war against drugs, punishments were much harsher for drugs used more in poor African American communities, like crack cocaine, in comparison to those drugs, like powder cocaine, that are more commonly used by upper class white people.

Because of the cost, racism and the negative effect it has on children the Next president should focus less on incarcerating drug users and more on the education on the negative effects of drugs as that has been proven to work more in preventing drug abuse.

Sincerely,

Nik S.