The term "war on drugs," first coined by former President Richard Nixon over 30 years ago, is the name of a movement to hinder drug abuse in America. While Nixon did not necessarily start the drug war, he put the program into overdrive, setting precedent for numerous presidents to come. Nixon's plan was to attempt to interrupt the importation of illegal drugs and to increase efforts to intercept them at the borders (1Gray 27). The Comprehensive Drug Prevention and Control Act of 1970 consolidated the previous anti-war legislation into one bill and therefore also established schedules of illicit drugs (1Gray 27). When George H. W. Bush became president, the law enforcement had been losing to new high-tech smugglers and people even accused him of working with the enemy (2Gray 111). The actions taken by both Nixon and Bush to decrease drug usage and crime in America highlight how useless and counterproductive the "war on drugs" is. .
According to Judge James P. Gray, a veteran Judge of the Superior Court in Orange County, "the war on drugs has resulted in the loss of more civil liberties protection than has any other phenomenon in our history" (1Gray 2). He also explained that the "government attempts to stop drug use by massive prisons, demonization of drug use, and prohibition of debate about our opinions" (1Gray 6). Nixon's programs and speeches caused a great distress among society, alienated young people, turned the society against the counterculture and also had the public turning against the addicts. .
While Nixon created various programs to help with the arrest of persons using or selling illegal drugs, he failed to create programs to help those with addiction. Bush fared the same way as in 1990 the Justice Department budgeted zero dollars for drug treatment in jails (Baum 290). If however former President Bush assumed that by putting drug users in jail, they would be cut off from their supply, then this plan failed as well.