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Rhetorical Analysis Of Richar Richard Nixon War On Drugs Speech

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President RIchard Nixon famously declared a “war on drugs” on June 17, 1971 to the Congress of the United States. In his speech, he asked Congress for an amendment that would provide his 1972 budget with an additional 155 million dollars to control drug abuse. This would provide president Nixon with a budget of 371 million dollars for programs to control drug abuse in the United States. To put it in more context, during this time, drugs had become a symbol of youthful rebellion, social disruption, and political disapproval. Nixon saw this as a issue because of the increase in narcotic deaths in New York City during the span of the 1960 and 1970. According to Nixon, “In 1960, less than 200 narcotic deaths were recorded in New York City. In 1970, the figure had risen to over 1,000” (1). In his own words, he claims that drug addiction is a national and international problem. Furthermore, Nixon’s method of fixing the drug/drug abuse problems involved five main ideas, a new approach to rehabilitation, a coordinated federal response, making rehabilitation a new priority, additional enforcement needs, and international involvement. …show more content…

For better or worse, this speech launched a campaign on a war that is still being fought today. Truly, the most surprising element of this speech was the use of the emotions, fear and hope. Nixon’s speech used fear as a mechanism to further prove his point on why drugs is public enemy number one. While, using hope as a mechanism to combat these fears with ways to prevent and control drug abuse. Drug abuse is a very controversial topic that many people have different opinions about. In my opinion, the war on drugs is a failure and Nixon was the cause of it. Although, Nixon had a good understanding of supply and demand, he worried more about punishing the drug addicts, rather than instituting them back into

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