The+Battle+for+Love+and+The+War+On+Drugs+Reagan+vs+Society

=Brittany Smeltzer= =What were the effects of anti-drug policies of the 1960s and 1970s? What were the effects?= From Marijuana and Psychedelics to Cocaine and Crack

As the 1960s rolled through, little anti-drug policies were made to protect the citizens from a new culture that would be sweeping across the nation. The origin of this culture explosion, some assume, would be the Summer of Love, or the summer of 1967. With music and entertainers, thousands of “flower followers”, and some new substances; the “drug culture” began. Moving from the cities into the suburbs, people all over the United States were experimenting and the government was doing nothing to stop it. “Riding the bus” was the term for those under the use of mind altering substances. The most common were marijuana and psychedelics (mushrooms and LSD). As use became more widespread, the government decided to do something. In 1965, the Drug Abuse Amendments were made. These were made more to raise awareness of the epidemic, but not really control it. Shortly after, anti-drug propaganda movies and television shows were being produced. One popular movie was called Reefer Madness. These movies and television shows projected the characters under drugs as crazy people. They would leave their babies in ovens or kill others while high. Of course, most of these “drug effects” were fake or exaggerated. The point was to scare those who hadn’t experimented with drugs yet. As the seventies approached more groups were made to keep drugs away from kids and in high schools. NORML, an organization against marijuana use was formed in 1970 along with the Narcotics Treatment Administration. Shortly after the founding of many of these groups, in 1971, Nixon declared a war on drugs. Due to Vietnam and disapproval in the country, the drug culture was turning into a rebellion of what was going in the country. After declaring his war on drugs, the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement was founded. The government began focusing their attention on the “white paper” drugs. President Ford said that the less-harmful drugs like marijuana were the ones to catch because of the high usage. So this left the country open to more dangerous drugs to sneak in. These drugs would be the epidemic of the 1980s; Cocaine, meth, and heroin. As the 1980s approached, the effects of the poor anti-drug policies made in the 1970s came through. The media had glamorized drug use, the anti-drug movies like Reefer Madness were mocked and even encouraged some to do drugs, and cocaine had already made it’s way into the United States. The drug lords in Columbia and Cuba would now be the government’s concern. A man named Carlos Lehdar would become a problem. He was a part of a group called the Medellin cartel. The Medellin would become America’s supplier for cocaine. In 1979, during a shootout between cops and dealers at the Dadeland Mall, the danger would be made apparent to the government about the Medellin cartel. After a few drugs busts and an extradition treaty between the U.S. and Columbia, the Medellin cartel was busted with over $2 billion of cocaine and cocaine bi-products. The epidemic would be slowly reversed, but never fixed by the Reagan administration and the “Just Say No” campaign. Drug abuse is still a problem across the United States, and may have been reduced if it was taken more seriously throughout the sixties and seventies.

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