Written by: Rachel Finney
My cultural problem is the battle for drug legalization and regulation. This is an important topic because the drug war has been used to violate the rights of everyone and justify military action in other countries. The prisons in America have become overcrowded by individuals with petty non-violent drug offenses.
The drug policy alliance is a New York City based nonprofit that promotes the decriminalization of responsible drug use, promotion of harm reduction and wants to facilitate an open dialog about drugs between youth, parents, and educators. I would like to encourage an open dialogue about drugs between all individuals as it would encourage more discussion which could bring about a change in mindset for a better world where the government doesn’t persecute people for the substances they put into their body. Young people are the primary target audience because young people are the ones that would care about this issue enough to make changes.
The rhetoric surrounding the war on drugs can be heated at times between the emotional appeals in favor of incarceration for nonviolent drug crimes and the fact based appeals offered by those in favor of decriminalization, legalization and regulation. In an article written by Daniel Patten titled, the mass incarceration of nations and the global war on drugs: comparing the United States’ domestic and foreign drug policies he discusses the mass incarceration of nonviolent crimes and how it has global implications that incarcerate entire countries. This article was published by the Crime and Social Justice Associates which is a magazine/journal appealing to an academic audience interested in reading about civil rights, human rights, international relations, government and political science, civil law and social issues. Daniel Patton has written many different articles on the infotrac database. This article in particular focuses on the tough sentencing surrounding drug offenses and the incarceration boom that the United States has seen in the last 30 years. In California it has been found that more people are incarcerated for nonviolent drug crimes than for murder, rape, and kidnapping combined. Nonviolent offenders are 94% of those incarcerated in federal prisons (Patton). Daniel Patton talks about how crime rates have remained consistent or have decreased while the incarceration rate has skyrocketed. He says, “The tough-on-crime rhetoric has overemphasized crime as a major social problem, leading Americans to irrationally fear crime; this public trepidation, fueled by the media’s obsession with covering crime since the 1980s, has had an impact on the souring incarceration rates.” This is important to keep in mind as the way we criminalize drug use contributes to societal issues.
I have created a poster for the drug policy alliance. I used logos in the design to appeal to logical people but also used pathos in the way that i presented the information about the fears some have about children taking drugs and how it would be if the drugs were instead regulated.
I will circulate the media by taking the steps it takes to post the posters somewhere on campus so that people will see it. I believe it is effective because they will be on display just like other posters are.
In conclusion this is an important topic to speak about because the scope of the problem is so huge and effects everybody from the taxes we pay to the way law enforcement treats everyone individually.