FREE ESSAY ON DENVER DRUG PROBLEM

DENVER DRUG PROBLEM

Since the end of World War II, almost every president has declared a war on illegal drug
use. The efforts against drugs that are currently used, got their start from a series of
laws passed during the Nixon administration's "War on Drugs". Many programs have been
established including Nancy Regan's "Just Say No" campaign which was started in 1983.
George Bush, later provided the DEA with its largest federal funding increase ever,
raising the DEA's budget to more than $18 billion. The War on Drugs has continued in the
1990s with a larger focus on the strict enforcment of U.S drug laws. However, the
increased enforcement of U.S. drug laws has led to prison overcrowding and a change from
the smugling of illegal substances to a local production of cheap, highly potent
substances such as crack, cocaine, and methamphetamine. While when compared to foreign
countries, the United States appears to be doing a good job in combating illegal drug
use, it is very clear that the drug policies used during the past three decades have
failed remarkably to meet their stated objectives. Limited drops in usage levels (rising
levels in Denver), failure to reduce violent crime related to drug use, failure to reduce
importation of ilegal substances, faliure to reduce availability of illegal drugs, the
expenditure of great amounts of money and limited public resources, and failure to
provide meaningful treatment for current substance abusers, are all evidence that in fact
the "War on Drugs" has been a non-sucessful program up until this point. 
In the city of Denver, the FBI denver devision has joined forces with local agencies
which include the Denver Police Department, U.S. Customs service, Immigtration and
Naturalization Service, and the DEA to impliment various progams including both
educational and enfocement policies. Mentorship for youth, Youth leadership, Parental and
family education, community orgainizaition projectsProfessional and peer intervention
such as the use of psychologists, Regional Prevention Specialists offering consultaton
and technical assistance in the deveolpment of community prevention programs, and DUI
prevention are among the list of things being done to combat the drug problem. 
The Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools & Communities (OSDFSC) and the Regional Alcohol
and Drug abuse resources program (RADAR), are local groups that were started in order to
provide programs and services to assist schools with: 
? Substance use and abuse prevention education, 
? Violence prevention education, 
? Promoting school safety, and
? Creating a disciplined learning environment.
The offices' approachs which are geared twoards preventative educaton, are representative
of Denver's focus on drug education. It is the offices' beliefs that by educating
students at an early age about the harmful effects of drugs on themselves and those
around them, a long-term solution to the drug problem may be in grasp. This method of
education rather than law enforcement measures being used has recently become the
standard in many major cities including Denver
In Denver's public schools, Project Alert is being used "to provide students the
motivation, skills, and practice to resist the gateway drugs: alcohol, tobacco,
marijuana, and includes a lesson on inhalant abuse." The program currently requires
middle school students to go through fourteen lessons that attempt to educate students
about the harmful affects of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. The program's main effort
is to build resilance in youth. Resiliency is the experience of encountering life's
adversities and challenges, being disrupted, but then not only recovering from the
adversity, but surfacing from the experience with strength, confidence, happiness,
self-esteem, and skills. (Glenn Richardson). As many other elementary schools,
high-schools, and colleges across the nation have done, the city of Denver and the Denver
Public School System has adopted a "no-tolerance" policy, in which a student found guilty
of drug use or possession is subject to immediate suspension or expulsion. This policy is
designed to detour youth from using drugs basically by means of intimidation. This method
has never worked with any crime so why would it work with drugs? The penalty for murder
in Texas is death, yet murders still occur there everyday. The goal of any drug policy
should be to lower the prevalence and spread of harmful drug use and substance abuse, and
to minimize the harms associated with such problems where they are found to exist. A no
tolerance policy clearly does not help to reach that goal. 
On March 31,1999 mayor Wellington E. Webb announced a new strategy for fighting the drug
war. In a press release he said the following:
This strategy will help the City of Denver focus its efforts on preventing drug abuse,
treating those who are addicted and providing our police officers with additional tools
to enforce our drug laws. This isn't a fight against drugs, it's a war. And it must be
waged with every available resource. The City's plan is comprehensive and identifies
numerous creative strategies to make Denver a drug-free city.
In the same press release, the strategy that the city of Denver now uses was outlined.
First, the Action Planning Committee (APC) was established to examine all media
strategies intended to prevent the use of harmful substances, relate the effectiveness of
treatment and develop a shared media strategy for Denver. Next, the mayor promised to
facilitate a process to strengthen the network of treatment providers in Denver in order
to provide greater resources in inner-city neighboorhoods. Prevention efforts were
heightened in the schools by requring the Denver Board of Education, private schools and
other community based organizations to agree upon and implement a drug prevention program
curriculum in the school system (ie. ALERT). 
The program's second objective is to support positive behaviors and healthy lifestyles
through education.
Gaps in recreation and after-schools programs were identifyed, and those gaps were filled
by working with the community to find resources; support programs by working with youth
and young adults; and by communicating the availability of such programs to the public
through avenues like the Community Assessment Center . Next strategies were devolped to
address the recovery issues of drug addicts and provide support services for those people
who have been through treatment to prevent relapse and promote integration. The third
objective of the program was to enhance communications and share information about drugs
and their effects. This was done by working with appropriate resources to collect and
relevant substance abuse data from existing sources to establish a central location of
information for use by policy makers, employers, service providers, and community
members. 
Expanding treatment services was the next part of the program that was implimented by
working within existing sources to establish the treatment needs of communities based on
geography, age, gender ethnicity, families and special populations. Another committee was
established to identify strategies which place an increased emphasis on the availability
of culturally unbiased treatment centers for people of color in and out of correctional
settings. 
Next, information depicting the types of substances being use in Denver; demographics of
users, venues leading to the use of harmful substances (media liquor store locations,
advertisements, etc.) and high drug trafficking areas was given to the public in order to
assist neighborhoods to reduce the number of liquor establishments and advertisements in
their communities, to identify successful neighborhoods, such as Park Hill, to be used as
models for others. to develop strategies to reduce billboards and advertisements for
harmful substances, and to assist treatment providers in better meeting the community's
needs. Supporting and enhancing Denver's drug courts was the next directive. Adding a
prevention component for children and families for all drug court participants. (When
youth are involved with substance abuse, intervention efforts should emphasize family
participation) 
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