The United States of America, a country that is often said to be the greatest nation in the world; a nation where opportunity does not cease to exist, and one that has a history of overcoming adversities that lie within its premises. It is ironically the same country that has been battling with what President Nixon first declared a "war on drugs." This war is a campaign by the United States government in an effort to end the production, import, sale, and consumption of illegal narcotics. The degree to which the war on drugs is being fought has been put to question due to the ineffectiveness of prohibitions and regulations that have been placed by the government. While it may appear that certain government actions adequately tackle the drug trade, it is obscure to many how deficient the efforts truly are at ceasing the drug market. With analysis of how drug policy evolved in the United States, it is safe to say that the war on drugs is indeed a failure, hypocritical and the cause of unintended consequences that resulted from an effort to prevent drug use in America. .
Drug policy in the twentieth century of the United States, made an effort to prohibit illegal drugs by restricting the sale and manufacture of specific narcotics. As knowledge of the detrimental effects from the use drugs became prevalent, the United States took steps toward finding a solution. The rationale behind the drug approach was that removing the supply of unlawful drugs to people in general would viably wipe out the drug's presence inside the nation.1The result of the efforts, however, were in vain. Consumption and production rarely diminished, and the interest for a drug that would have the same effect as the original one, only surfaced. With the prohibition of one drug, there was constantly another that could replace it. The illegal drug trade can be understood with an analysis of a market in economics.
