DRUG LAWS IN BERGEN AND PASSAIC COUNTIES: THE WAR ON DRUGS (Part 1)

In 2007, the Department of Justice disclosed that there were 7 million people in this country that are in prison, on parole or on probation. A great majority of those prisoners have been convicted of drug related offenses. The cost for incarcerating these prisoners is approximately 3 billion dollars a year. We spend more on maintaining people in the dark dangerous dungeons that law enforcement agents call "correction institutions" then we do on education. Moreover, the first 8 months of 2007, over 1 million people were arrested in this country for drug related offenses. Over a half a million of those people were arrested for a marijuana related offenses.

Many say that this impossible situation is the product of the so called "war on drugs" that began in this country in the 1960s. During that time, the country was rife with political and social chaos and as a result many Americans began to move the government to provide better police protection including efforts to stop what appeared to be a proliferation of drug use. In 1968, president Richard Nixon responded with a well integrated anti-crime statute that made drug dealers and drug users some of America's greatest enemies.