War on Drugs

After reading Metaphors We Live By, it was apparent that the metaphors we use determine how we treat the problem we're dealing with. Jimmy Carter used war as the metaphor for the energy crisis, and that metaphor pretty much determined the way that the government and the American public dealt with the problem.

The war metaphor is also applied to drug usage and the problems it causes in the United States. We are filling our jails and paying huge amounts of money to keep inmates there. A great deal of people are in jail because of drug addiction. These inmates go to jail, but can't get over there addiction because no treatment is provided. If we try to use a softer punishment to cure the drug problem in this country, we could decrease the amount of people in our jails and the amount of money spent each year to take care of inmates.

By applying the war metaphor to the drug problem, the American public feels that we need to use "hard" punishment to solve the problem. The metaphor highlights the fact that we need to FIGHT the problem. However, it hides the fact that fighting the problem by throwing offenders in jail isn't going to help. "Soft" punishment will help the problem because the only way that drug users will beat their addiction is by receiving counseling and rehabilitation services. These people have a disease in a sense - an addiction that hard time in a prison won't cure. They need to go to rehab to get over their addiction.