The war on drugs; can it be won?

Drugs have always been around; and there has always been, and probably always will be, some drugs that are controversial with how they can be used.

The battle against illegal drugs is nothing new. One of the most famous time periods that stand out when it comes to the government taking a stance against drugs was in July of 1971, when President Nixon declared a "war on drugs."

There was a growing problem that was unlike any we had seen before. Nixon also greatly increased the size of federal drug enforcement agencies around the same time in an effort to fight this war.

Although drug offences where starting to become what some were calling an epidemic, drugs continued to become more and more prevalent throughout the United States. Drug addictions were leading to an increase in other crimes.

Drug overdoses and violence were also on the rise. As drugs continued to be distributed and sold at a record pace into the 1980s, President Regan continued the "war on drugs," and pushed for stricter laws and more enforcement of those laws.

In 1980, the number of U.S citizens incarcerated because of illegal drugs was reported to be in the 50,000 range, and by 1997 that number was more than 400,000.

It has now been more than 40 years since this war was declared; we have many more laws, and a much larger federal government, but the problem is still the same. Most everyone agrees there is a drug problem in our country, and most of us have seen the effects these dangerous drugs such as methamphetamines, heroin, and cocaine can have on people.

People who use drugs affect everyone around them, and many times children are the ones who it hurts the most. But is it possible that our government has gone about this war the wrong way?

The normal "fix" it seems for those in Washington is always to increase the size of the federal government and take more control. This obviously has not worked. Passing laws may deter people from committing some crimes; but in the case of something that becomes so addicting, this has not worked.

I once had someone ask me why we could not get all the drugs out of the county, and I replied as follows: if you have a leaky water pipe in your house that is running water onto the floor, how do you keep the water off your floor?

You fix the pipe! Instead, what we have been doing all over this country is mopping up the water and waiting for it to run out on the floor again, so we can once more mop it up.

We have a border that is not secure and as long as cartel members can smuggle illegal drugs into our country by the truckload, we will never be able to completely remove the drug problem.

We go after drugs in our county and that process leads us to another county. Because of this, we form a drug task force made up of multiple counties, but guess what we still find? The drugs are coming from another state.

This game of chase the drugs will almost always take you back to the same place, the border. We have a system that slows down drug sales because we take down those who sell it in our county, as well as those who use it. We hit the problem from both sides, but that does not get rid of the drugs.

You have to go to the source; and until our government can secure our border and make sure drugs cannot be moved across so easily, the drug war will continue.

My office will continue to pursue and arrest those who sell or use these dangerous drugs, but everyone can help fight the war on drugs by contacting our nation's leaders to let them know that we demand a safe and secure border for our country.