My first Magazine Final Draft Multimodal Project 4 | Seite 12

The War on Drugs designed laws to target the kingpins of the drug trade, however, the
adaptation of these strict penalties has resulted in few noteworthy arrests. Instead, the men and
women trafficking significant quantities of narcotics commonly elude capture while the minor
pawns in the drug game crowd America’s prisons. Katrina Farias asserts that low level drug of-
fenders comprise the bulk of drug prisoners while most high-ranking drug lords are immune to
prosecution. While her research is about prisoners in Latin America, this trend persists in the
United States. The conventions that have shaped drug penalties in America have infected most
nations in the Western Hemisphere as they have adapted similar policies in an effort to appease
the lone superpower in the region. Ramy Odem similarly analyzes the influence of the United
States on its neighbor to the north. His article, “Emerging from the Haze of America’s War on
Drugs and Examining Canada’s New Half-Baked Laws.,”, identities the differences that have
long existed between America and Canada with regards to punishments given to drug offenders.