Drug crimes have reached a peak in California in these last few years. To counter this drug smuggling in the state, several federal as well as state law enforcement agencies have been set up. This has been done to curb the overwhelming drug related crimes in the several towns and cities of the state. A number of mobile enforcement teams have been employed throughout the state of California to fight this growing concern of drug crimes. Besides, these state enforcement teams, the DEA has also come on a full swing to give the drug organizations of California a tough fight. In the last two decades, the state of California experienced a bloodcurdling 25 times increase in the drug crime convictions. These record number of convictions shot up the state’s position to number one in the whole nation. The drug offender incarceration rate of California was counted to be 115 per 100,000 of the total population, which is actually more than two times the national average.

This unequalled increase in the imprisonment rate in the state can be attributed to the rise in the drug arrests in the last few years. The escalating arrests relating to drug crimes have compelled the law makers to toughen up the sentencing laws all the more. After all, most of the drug crimes that have been recorded in the state in the last few years include prison-eligible offenders involved with illicit drug use. The unique and harsh punishments or sentencing terms for drug offences in California is thought to be deterring. This promotes more and more arrests and imprisonments which are hoped to dissuade the misuse of drugs in the state and consequently lower the street crimes by removing the offender from the state’s community. Although the laws relating to drug abuse have been established by the California state legislature itself, the arrests and sentencing decisions lie with the individual counties.

The counties of California pursue the drug policy enforcements in different ways which are sharply contrasting from one another. These sharp contrasting ways have created wide variations on how the drug laws are implemented in the different counties of the state. For example, the San Francisco County has increased the drug arrests and made the prosecutions more severe for the manufacturers and dealers of drugs. However, they have minimized many of the sentencing terms or penalties for the possession of drugs. However, the crime report studies have also revealed that stricter laws haven’t really been that powerful yet in declining the drug crimes in California.