Race and the war on drugs
[1] The War on Drugs has led to controversial legislation and policies, including mandatory minimum penalties and stop-and-frisk searches, which have been suggested to be carried out disproportionately against minorities.
[7][8] Several scholars, including the historian and lawyer Michelle Alexander, have stated that the War on Drugs is one product of a political strategy known as "tough on crime."
[9] A 1966 U.S. News & World Report article covering Nixon's presidential campaign quoted him as saying that "the increasing crime rate can be traced directly to the spread of the corrosive doctrine that every citizen possesses an inherent right to decide for himself which laws to obey and when to disobey them.
[9] Alexander writes that while scholars now attribute the rising crime rates to the surge in population of the baby boomer generation, conservatives then tied the increases to race.
"[14] The War on Drugs was declared by President Richard Nixon during a special message to Congress delivered on June 17, 1971, in response to increasing rates of death from narcotics.
To address the supply front, Nixon requested funding to train narcotics officers internationally and proposed various legislation to disrupt manufacturers of illegal drugs.
Both intellectuals argue that marijuana was purposefully aligned by conservative politicians with an urban black population, civil rights protests, and the rising crime rates of the late 1960s and the early 1970s.
The first response came from Nixon's newly appointed Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, headed by Jerome Jaffe to provide free synthetic alternatives to heroin in the form of government-regulated methadone.
Black activists in Chicago, DC, and Harlem called on government to increase the policing and the sentencing for individuals involved in robbery, mugging, street dealing and murder.
[25] Many civil rights advocates pushed back against the law and order rhetoric that won Nixon the White House, but other activists from some of the most drug-affected cities were some of the earliest supporters of more punitive drug policies.
[26] Many historians, including Foreman Jr. and Alexander write that knowingly or unknowingly, black politicians helped the formation of the American penal system, which would grow to operate at levels unprecedented in world history.
Rockefeller, according to New York District Attorney Arthur Rosenblatt, had been a champion of rehabilitation treatment methods as governor but now felt that those policies were failing, turned to the "tough on crime" ideas of Nixon, and introduced the new laws to his state.
Rosenblatt testified that addict or casual users, or anyone else found in possession of even trace amounts of marijuana, cocaine, or heroin were eligible for a prison sentence and that almost immediately, there was a disproportionate rate of arrest and incarceration in urban and minority neighborhoods.
Robert Strutman, head of the New York City DEA office recalled, "In order to convince Washington, I needed to make drugs a national issue and quickly.
[48] In 1996, the journalist Gary Webb published a series of articles for the San Jose Mercury News tying the Reagan administration to the trafficking of illegal narcotics into the United States.
A California-based drug dealer, "Freeway," Rick Ross testified that Norwin Meneses and Danillo Blandon Reyes, two members of the FDN, supplied him with cocaine for much of the 1980s.
Adams denounced Webb for his failure to contact the CIA and "cross check sources and allegations" and concluded, "For investigative reporters determined to uncover the truth, procedures like these are unacceptable.
[60] A 1989 Washington Post investigative story accused the administration of setting up an 18-year-old black man from Baltimore in a sting operation to showcase the drug problem close to home.
The DEA, using an undercover agent, pushed a black 18-year-old high school student, Keith Jackson, to make a sale of crack outside the White House.
The plan also laid out funding for treatment and education but ultimately believed that "none of these can be effective unless America restores the rule of law in its cities and holds drug users accountable for the damage they cause society.
[71] Scholars have argued that Clinton's policies came in an attempt to swing back the tide of white voters who had left the party two decades earlier to support Reagan.
[77] In 1995, the United States Sentencing Commission delivered a report to Congress concluding that because 80% of crack offenders were black, the 100-1 disparity disproportionately affected minorities.
[98] A 2000 study found that the disproportionality of black drug offenders in Pennsylvania prisons was unexplained by higher arrest rates, which suggested the possibility of operative discrimination in sentencing.
[101] Professor Cathy Schnieder of International Service at American University noted that in 1989, blacks, representing 12-15% of all drug use in the United States, made up 41% of all arrests.
Employment opportunities (and associated healthcare benefits), access to public housing and food stamps, and financial support for higher education are all jeopardized, if not eliminated, as a result of such a conviction.
However, the damage has compounded beyond individuals to affect African-American communities as a whole, with some social scientists suggesting the War on Drugs could not be maintained without societal racism and the manipulation of racial stereotypes.
[113] In addition, the high incarceration rate has led to the juvenile justice system and family courts to use race as a negative heuristic in trials, leading to a reinforcing effect.
[citation needed] High numbers of African American arrests and charges of possession show that although most drug users in the United States are white, blacks are the largest group being targeted as the root of the problem.
[citation needed] Disproportionate arrests in African-American communities for drug-related offenses has not only spread fear but also perpetuated a deep distrust for government and what some call racist drug enforcement policy.
[120] Additionally, these women typically have an economic attachment to, or fear of, male drug traffickers, creating a power paradigm that sometimes forces their involvement in drug-related crimes.
