A# 8 ADMJ 302 27948 Optional AssignmentYour assignment is to evaluate the U.S. War on Drugs (War) and take a stand pro or con on the effectiveness of the War. You must write an essay of not less than 2,200 words not counting quotes. Assignments of less than 2,200 words will not be graded. A well done assignment may well exceed 3,000 words. Your grade will be 60 percent for content and 40 percent for grammar and APA compliance.

This assignment is due on October 29, 2010, before 5:00PM. You must follow the APA guidelines for this assignment. You must cite at least five (5) sources.One of your cited sources must be, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarnation in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

The title of your paper will be: The U.S. War on Drugs a Brief History and Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the U.S. War on Drugs.

You must first define the War, and outline its purpose, history, and accomplishments. You should provide statistics covering, at least, the money spent in the War; the drugs recovered/destroyed; and the impact of the War on the price and availability of drugs and drug usage trends.

You must also address the impact the War has had on the Black and Brown communities, crime, law enforcement, and the prison systems.

Once you have completed this background information you must argue for or against the effectiveness of the War. Your arguments must be logical, consistent, and supported by facts.

You must start your argument by establishing the standards by which you will judge effectiveness. Your standards list the factors such as, drug use over the period of the War. You mustprovide the rules governing the application of the standard. A rule for the factor of ‘drug use over the period of the War’ could be: A significant decline in overall drug usageof at least ten (10) percent or a decline of ten (10) percent for those ages 12 to 24 is a sign that the War is effective. If there has been a lesser decline or no decline or an increase in drug usage than the War has not been effective. Please see the example below. The development, documentation, and application of clear standards and evaluation rules is critical to this assignment. You must explain why each standard you select is a key factor in determining the effectiveness of the War. You must also show why your evaluation rules are valid indicators of effectiveness.

There is a huge amount of controversy and information on the War on the internet and in print. Please be careful and select the most reliable data and check the sources whenever possible. I have provided some starting points but you must use due diligence in using these and all other sources.

EXAMPLE:

The most import standard for the evaluation of the effectiveness of the U.S. War on Drugs (War) is the impact or lack of impact of the War on actual illegal drug usage in the U.S. This is the critical factor because for most observers the expenditures of large amounts of money and person power over several decades should show an overall decline in drug usage. This is because the goal of the War is to prevent illegal drug usage. If the level of drug usage is unchanged or increased than the purpose of the war is called into question. All of the eight studies I have reviewed and the U.S. Drug enforcement agencies have employed this standard (USDEA Annual Reports, 2000-20009).

To be more specific I have expressed this standard as an overall decline of illegal drug usage of at least10 percent from the time of the start of the War (1970) to 2009 (the most recent year for which statistics are available).

I have select 10 percent because a lesser degree of change would be trivial and would be insufficient to justify the enormous expenditures of the war. Drexal (1999) and Himal and Johnson (2005) have used the 10 percent level of significance in their evaluations of the War.

Now, when we apply this standard to the data on drug usage over the last 39 years we find that in 1970 the overall illegal drug usage was 18 percent of the population over the age of 12 based on the date from the Centers for Disease Control survey of ...

END OF EXAMPLE

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