Many Americans have little first hand experience with the problems associated with drug use. What Americans do know is mainly from what they hear from the Mass Media, particularly television. A prominent group of physicians (PLNDP) conducted a survey, their findings showed that the U.S. is getting the wrong picture about drugs. The PLNDP, Physicians Leadership on National Drug Policy, found that half of the individuals in the U.S. that admit to cocaine and heroin uses were Caucasian. They stated that the sixty seven percent of the individuals in the U.S. who admitted to regularly smoking marijuana were white, and that less than seventeen percent were black. The media regularly depicts blacks as the ones who are smoking pot, and shooting heroin, when in fact it is whites who are regularly abusing these drugs.

When I first put in the CD-ROM to further conduct research on the drug poli

Drug uses by individuals who are incarcerated show that; inmates in state prisons tend to have started using drugs earlier and more frequently than the population as a whole. Since 1980 the number of people incarcerated for violating drug laws grew from fifty thousand, to over four hundred thousand, and the majority of inmates were incarcerated with something relating to drugs.

So what is the government planning on doing about these problems? Well the National Drug Control Strategy says that; demand reduction is the centerpiece of current policy. Prevention of drug abuse by youth is top priority, including underage drinking and smoking. A commitment to robust international drug interdiction programs and reinforcement of domestic interdictions will help in the reduction of drug problems. Today’s national agenda says that the war on drugs costs well over sixteen billion dollars.

The availability of potentially harmful drugs varies by your geographic location, age of potential users, and the drug in question. The percent of males and females who have ever used an illicit drug is, males forty one percent, and females are thirty four percent. Thirty eight percent of whites have used an illicit drug, thirty nine percent blacks, and thirty one percent Hispanic. The age range at which individuals use drugs goes like this; from age twelve to age seventeen is twenty percent, from age eighteen to twenty five is fifty five percent, from age twenty-five to thirty-four is sixty four percent, and age thirty five and up is twenty eight percent. It is said that if an individual who has reached the age of twenty and has never used drugs, the chances of him/her to start using are slim to none. Therefore, I feel that if there were a massive amount of drug prevention programs the rates of drug use would depreciate. I also feel that this would make the percentages in all categories drop, it is my opinion that if you eliminate the problem before it starts there will be no problem.

With such a costly battle at the hands of the citizens of the U.S., not just dollar amounts but life altering costs, what are we going to do, how are we going to solve this problem? Should we just give up and legalize all drugs, should we consider that we have been trying to solve this issue since the early 20th century and our progress is in slow motion compared to speed used in solving our nations other problems? How are we going to handle this is the question we have to ask ourselves. Personally I think that this issue will remain just that, an issue for a long time to come. Out nation is trying new things, it has legalized the use of marijuana in a few

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