After watching The House I Live In, I couldn’t believe the jail time that many of the inmates were getting. There have been countless murder cases, even horrific ones, in which the offender had a lesser sentence than some of the mentioned drug dealers and addicts in the documentary. I couldn’t believe that some people can even get a life sentence on a drug charge alone. It was astounding that one small mistake can destroy one’s entire life. Many of the drug offenders should have been helped and treated instead of being thrown into a prison and transported far away from society.  I don’t think it is right to treat these people the same way a murderer would be treated and labeling the offender as a bad person. Most of the time the person was not raised in the best environment and is doing what he can to survive. With these kind of charges, it is scary that cops will do whatever it takes to bust as many people as they can in order to receive a higher pay check. In the documentary, police officers would get paid overtime for additional cases and filling out the paperwork that goes along with it. This documentary really opened my eyes to the unfair ways people with drug charges are being handled. They shouldn’t just be banished from society as a way of dealing with them. I hope change comes soon and we, as a country, figure out a better way of dealing with the war on drugs.