Essay Against War Drugs

Clearly we are not winning the war, have lost millions of lives, wasted billions of dollars, and still do not have a reason to believe it will not keep getting worse over time.

Dangerous and poisonous drugs were restricted and pharmacists would face the death penalty if they were to poison someone (Campos, 383).

Later, the Hague International Opium Convention founded the basis for drug control on 1912.

Soon after the Mexican Revolution on 1914, the Sanitary Council restricted the import of opiates and cocaine in Mexican ports.

The Sanitary Council gained policy-making power under the new constitution on 1917.

Up to the 1930’s Latin America became the testing ground for U.

S might as a political and military power, in other words, “its backyard.” This was further enforced through Roosevelt’s Corollary in 1904 that promoted the use of gunboat diplomacy in Latin America, favoring U. Gunboat diplomacy left Latin American nations with the other unfavorable option of an intervention, a military invasion, taking down the government, and replacing it with a U. This lead to democratically elected leaders like Jacobo Árbenz Villanova the president of Guatemala to be taken out of power, for doing what was best for his people, and not Washington, or private interest groups, like the United Fruit Company in this case.

The idea of degeneration came from modernized Europe, and tried to explain the miserable political and economic realities of post-colonial life for Mexico’s indigenous people, as well as the strong racial hierarchies ruling its social life. At this time Mexico was constantly under the threat of invasion from its Northern neighbor, and thought that a strong and healthy population was needed to defend the nation.

José María Rodríguez, president of the Sanitary Council stated “degeneration of the Mexican race is a fact” (Campos, 399).

At the same time because of the unofficial censorship of Porfirio Diaz, journalists who were jailed, reported from inside the prisons describing them as corrupt and hell on earth, emphasizing a metamorphic change in prisoners who were surrounded by marijuana and other substances.

This linkage portrayed drug addicts as “wild beasts and savages…with simian movements, and claws” (Campos, 404).