I remember when my elementary school was assigned a D.A.R.E. officer so that we would learn about the pitfalls of drug use. Remember D.A.R.E.? The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program. These officers would come and speak to students about why drugs are bad and how they can ruin lives.
My D.A.R.E. officer was Officer Allen. He was a veteran police officer who had charisma oozing from his ears, so it was easy for him to make a connection with most students.
Officer Allen was a medium sized light skinned brother who had a serious receding hairline. I remember once he told our fifth grade class about this date he had with a woman and how she loved his bald head. That’s the type of brother Officer Allen was, just a down to earth type of cat.
He spoke to us often about the perils of drug use and where we will end up if we chose to walk that path but he also talked with our class about life.
A few of my classmates from elementary school ended up where Officer Allen said they would be and that’s jail.
Not to long ago I went back home for a visit to see my mom and I stopped by Church’s chicken to grab a two piece. I ran into Officer Allen and to my surprise, he immediately recognized me.
While Officer Allen was clueless regarding the trek of my life since our chats in grade school, he told me that he was proud of me because he’s witnessed hundreds of students from my old school system parade in and out of jail but he never saw me.
D.A.R.E. never truly connected with this brother because as a kid I thought it was lame. But I always respected Officer Allen because he kept it 100 with us.
Not sure where Officer Allen is today but to me he is a representation of the government’s war on drugs. He was a part of a program aimed toward keeping kids off of drugs and using fear as a means to an end.
But D.A.R.E.’s effect on other students hasn’t panned out as well. According to statistics the D.A.R.E. program has cost over $230 million dollars while illegal drug use continues to rise.
The war on drugs started back in 1971 when President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse public enemy number one in America. He said that the United States had to go on the offensive if we were to stop drug abuse.
Notice that Nixon said drug abuse and not the sale of drugs.
Since that point in American history our neighborhoods, communities, townships, and families have never been the same.
The United States government has spent over a trillion dollars on this war and we have yet to see any type of return on our, ahem, investment.
Over 90% of cocaine is trafficked in through our southern border while the Federal Drug Control’s budget has ballooned to $15 billion dollars. So no matter how much money we throw at the problem it never goes away.
Over an eight year period from 1999 to 2007 over 80 percent of all drug arrests were for possession and not sales. So your cousin Ray-Ray and little sister Candace are serving time for the drug lord’s crimes down in South America, dig me?
But while the government continues to rage a public relations war on drugs, Americans are still being locked up at an alarming rate for an addiction that’s usually treated in clinics, not prisons.
Due in part to the war on drugs, the prison population in this country has inflated to over 2 million inmates and black males make up 35 percent of the inhabitants.
The numbers for those behind bars because of arrests for the possession of crack cocaine are staggering. 35 percent of federal prison inmates are behind bars for drug crimes and 81 percent of all crack cocaine offenders just nine years ago were black.
It seems as if the federal government’s concern has been to stamp out the people who use crack cocaine instead of the distributors and dealers. While that war against the afflicted has been waged, the use of methamphetamines has vaulted to the top of the list as a primary drug in the U.S. In fact, it is the number one drug of concern in Central Florida.
Will the government change its sentencing practices to arrest and jail the users of meth instead of the dealers like they did with crack cocaine?
Forty years have passed and our county has spent more money jailing drug addicts than helping them. I think its time to put this war to bed.
