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Punitive & Rehabilitative Approaches to Drug Policy

In 1989, amid great public fanfare, a newly intensified federal "War on Drug" was proclaimed. Federal antidrug spending was sharply increased. A debate then arose about how this money should be spent; particularly, whether the emphasis should be heavily in favor of lawenforcement and punitive approaches, as in fact it was, or whether a greater emphasis on treatment and rehabilitation of harddrug abusers would be a more productive approach to an antidrug strategy. This debate is not new, but goes back to the earliest days of Federal action against drugs, in the World War I era. Since that time, as we shall see, the public response to the "drug problem" has followed a generally predictable pattern. It is a pattern which has consistantly favored punishment over rehabilitation for drug users; which has persisted in treating drugs and drug addiction as essentially criminal vice matters, roughly parallel to gambling and prostitution, rather than as medical matters. This study traces the history of the conflict between punitive and rehabilitative approaches in American federal antidrug policy, and examines some of the major factors which have driven policy so persistantly in a punitive direction. Roughly, we may say that the driving force is political in the broad sense, cultural politics. The American public regards "drugs" essentially not as a phenomenon in their own right, but as a manifestation and symbol of what it most fears in society: crime, deviant behavior, marginal and unpopular social groups  particularly blacks  and generally a negation of "American values" or the Protestant ethic.

Crime rates were rising dramatically. At the same time, drug use and drug addiction were also on the rise, and the drug culture was spreading to new groups. In response to the public's fear of crime and drugs, politicians rushed to pass new, evermoresevere drug laws, with long mandatory prison sentences for drug dealing...

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Punitive & Rehabilitative Approaches to Drug Policy. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:10, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705635.html