The War on Drugs
The War on Drugs is an effort created in the 1970s in the United States to address illegal drug use by increasing penalties and incarceration for drug offenders with disproportionate racial effects. The drug war has not made us safer but instead devastated communities, especially minority communities, while leading to mass incarceration and trillions wasted in tax dollars. Political and racial motives led politicians to send a message that drug use was a criminal problem and not a public health issue. It is time to discard that false idea, and support policy to end the war on drugs and invest in rehabilitation and recovery programs for drug addicts.
Three presidential terms during the end of the 1900’s played a major role in the War on Drugs, setting America up for centuries of racial and economic failure in the justice system. The War on Drugs began in June of 1971 when President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse to be “public enemy number one” and increased funding for drug-control agencies. In 1973, the Drug Enforcement Administration was created as a federal effort to control drug abuse.
The efforts intensified during the presidency of Ronald Reagan which began in 1981. He expanded efforts to focus on criminal punishment over treatment which led to mass incarceration, and a large increase in incarceration in America. Incarceration for nonviolent drug offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to 400,000 in 1997. Nancy Reagan, President Reagan’s wife, led a “Just Say No” campaign which was privately funded to educate school children on the dangerous effects of drugs. A major reason for the extensive expansion of the War on Drugs was caused by media coverage of the crack epidemic in the 1980s, which encouraged support for Reagan's strict positions on drugs. Then in 1986, the US Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act which issued almost two billion dollars to the War on Drugs and established mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug offenses. The mandatory minimums had a massive gap between the sentence for the same amount of crack versus powder cocaine: possession of five grams of crack led to an automatic five-year sentence while it took the possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine for a sentence of that same amount.
During the next presidency of Bill Clinton, he followed the drug war strategies of his Republican predecessors by strengthening the harsh drug policies and even rejected the U.S. Sentencing commission's recommendation to eliminate the difference between crack and powder cocaine sentences.
Since 80% of crack users were African American, the newly instated mandatory minimums led to an unfair increase in incarceration rates for Black drug offenders. While the rates of drug use and sales were practically the same, Black and Latinx people are far more likely to be searched, arrested, and wrongly convicted. One of Nixon’s top aides, John Ehrlichman, revealed in a 1994 interview that was published much later, that the war on drugs was “designed to target Black people and hippies”. The racial bias is also largely due to the crack crisis. Stories of “crack babies” and “crackheads” were largely portrayed to be Black, even though most crack users were white. Crack users were portrayed as dangerous and needed to be locked up. They weren't offered help but instead looked at as less than. In 1988, Congress provided hundreds of millions more for police and prisons, and made crack the only drug for which possession was a federal crime.States followed and authorized harsher penalties for crack offenses with a disparity between powder and crack cocaine of 100-1 in states like North Dakota and Iowa. Some states wanted to bring back whipping posts and chain gangs as a punishment for crack possession.
Drug laws have always affected people of color in America. The first anti-opium laws in the 1870s were directed at Chinese immigrants. The first anti-cocaine laws were directed at black men in the South and the first anti-marijuana laws were directed at Mexican migrants. This racial disparity has continued decades later. From 1991 to 2001, nine times as many Black people went to prison for crack offenses compared to their white counterparts and their sentences for crack were double white crack offenders. Currently, Black people are arrested for narcotics offenses at a rate of three times higher than white people. Black people are also arrested at way higher rates for possession of cocaine than white people were arrested for opiods despite opioids being more deadly.
The impact of drug induced incarceration spans long after the actual time in jail. Individuals incarcerated for drug violations are denied food stamps and public assistance. States have different policies but some include suspending driver's license, denying child custody, voting rights, employment, loans, and financial assistance.
After the saddening history of the media portraying minorities to be dangerous drug users, the public has shifted their opinion on the drug war from their original stance when it first began. According to a poll by the ACLU, 65% of voters support ending the War on Drugs as it is not making the country safer, but increasing disparity and poverty. Additionally, 66% argue to eliminate criminal penalties for drug possession in place of investing in resources for rehabilitation such as treatment and addiction services. In reflection of these statistics, some states are taking action to end the war on drugs. 17 states so far have legalized cannabis, and some states such as Oregon have gone as far to decriminalize all drugs, and instead shift resources to drug treatment. Democratic lawmakers have introduced the Drug Policy Reform Act in order to decriminalize drugs and invest in measures to combat drug addiction nationwide.
Even with new advances, the United States still faces extreme and racist policy when it comes to drug related offenses and sentences. Currently, 700,000 people are arrested for cannabis offenses and 500,000 people are incarcerated for a drug law violation every year, disproportionately affecting black and brown people.