FROM CRIMINALIZATION TO REHABILITATION: Abandoning “The War on Drugs” THESIS EDIT | Page 7

come across while doing business, “whether between buyer and seller or between rival sellers.”
When contracts are breached within the criminal-underworld, there are no civilized adjudication
procedures set in place, and “the result is often some form of violent sanction, which usually
leads to retaliation and then open warfare in the streets.”
One example of this is the capital city of the United States, Washington, D.C., which has,
“become known as the ‘murder capital’ even though it is the most heavily policed city in the
United States.” There is no dispute about the cause of these crime rates. Recreational drug use,
whether it be the use of crack-cocaine or marijuana, does not produce this kind of result on its
own. Instead, says Boaz, it is “one of the grim and bitter consequences of an ideological
crusade,” the romanticized, over exposed, media driven “war on drugs,” “whose proponents will
not yet admit defeat.”
Perhaps one of the most publicized negative side-effects of the war on drugs has been the
fact that it makes necessary the creation and maintenance of the biggest prison systems in
history. What is causing these high mass incarceration rates? Primarily low-level drug offenders.
According to Bryan Stevenson, writing for the Global Commission On Drug Policies in 2011, it
has been reported that “40% of drug arrests are for simple possession of marijuana.”
Another statistic to consider: “The United States is home to less than 5 percent of the
world’s population but nearly 25 percent of its prisoners... over 1.6 million people are arrested,
prosecuted and incarcerated, placed under criminal justice supervision and/or deported each year
for a drug law violation” (The Drug Policy Alliance, “Mass Criminalization”). Any way you
look at it, this doesn’t seem justified. The United States has become known as “A Nation of
Jailers,” using the "lock 'em up" mentality, with a militaristic approach to what has been firmly
established as a health issue.