In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. He stated, “America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse." Nixon chose to combat the widespread drug use in America by creating the DEA and instituting mandatory minimum drug sentencing laws, meaning that nonviolent drug offenders had federal minimums sentences placed on them. Nixon also elevated marijuana to a Schedule 1 substance, the most restrictive category of drugs, alongside bath salts and heroin. This sentiment was continued by Ronald Reagan who, amidst widespread hysteria regarding drug use, chose to expand on the draconian drug laws set by his predecessor, heading zero tolerance policies that ultimately led to cases such as Weldon Angelos, a man sentenced to, and currently serving, 55 years in a federal penitentiary with no possibility of parole for three marijuana sales. Angelos was 24 when he was convicted and had two sons, and if he lives to get out, he will be 79 years old. His children will be over 50 years old. The American people will end up paying over 1.5 million dollars to keep Angelos incarcerated.
The War on Drugs was not started with good intentions: former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman even admitted that Nixon and his advisors invented the drug war in order to target the African American community, as well as the political left, stating ''The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people." Ehrlichman goes on to explain that by demonizing recreational substances commonly used by ''hippies and black people,'' Nixon could discredit those who were most likely to oppose his war effort. Ehrlichman stated, ''We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities." Noting the effects of the war, Ehrlichman explains that ''We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did." Another 'benefit' for Nixon regarding of the War on Drugs is that by throwing thousands of minorities in prison, it eliminates many voters who may not support him, because even after they have served their time they are barred from voting.
Reagan increased the scope of the war exponentially, with the widespread popularization of civil asset forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture is a legal process in which police seize the assets, such as cars, houses and money, of anyone they suspect may have committed a crime. The victim of the forfeiture does not have to be charged with any crime whatsoever, much less found guilty. The assets seized are often auctioned off, or given directly to the department that seized them. These laws have caused racial profiling such as police targeting African Americans and poor communities (which are relatively helpless), allowing them to be preyed upon by the very men and women who swore to protect them. Case and point: Joseph Rivers is a 22-year-old black man who had his hard earned money stolen by the DEA, without being charged or arrested for any crime. 'Policing for profit' became a major issue, as police disproportionally focused on poor, black communities, seeking to seize assets from citizens to benefit themselves and their departments.
Instead of fighting a war on poverty, Reagan fought a war on the poor, supporting the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which placed a higher penalty on the possession of crack cocaine as opposed to powder cocaine, due to crack cocaine being cheaper and used primarily by blacks while powder cocaine is more expensive, and is most often used by upper-class whites. For example, distribution of 500 grams of powder carries a minimum prison sentence of five years, while the distribution of just 5 grams of crack cocaine carries with it a minimum prison sentence of five years. Due to these ridiculously uneven sentencing laws which disproportionally targeted blacks, incarceration rates skyrocketed, the US prison population rose 700% from 1970 to 2005, one in every fifteen black males are incarcerated, and half of all prisoners in the US are locked up for drug offenses. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, seven to ten times more than most first world nations. There are over 2,220,300 Americans behind bars today, roughly equivalent to one in every 110 people. In order to sustain the rapid growth of prisoners, Reagan began privatizing prisons, allowing them to be taken over by for-profit businesses, such as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), setting a dangerous precedent and leading to many cases of horrific living conditions, as the businesses sought to turn a profit rather than care for the incarcerated.
In the history of the United States, the immense nature of the drug war has only been rivaled once, in 1920, when the Federal Government banned the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcohol. The Prohibition, like the war on drugs, proved to be an immense and utter failure on all accounts. Although consumption of alcohol fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it became more dangerous to consume, as without standards and regulations, alcohol was created in highly unclean and hazardous conditions with distributors capitalizing on the demand with moonshine and bathtub gin, which lead to the deaths of thousands, much like the unregulated nature of narcotics today. Due to the illegal nature of the product, business disputes were resolved not by the proper authorities but by gunfire, as organized crime, namely the Italian mafia, rose to power as they distributed liquor, building an empire that lasted most of a century. Just as the mafia rose to prominence due to the prohibition of liquor, drug cartels have become incomprehensibly powerful due to the prohibition of drugs, a prime example being the Medellín Cartel, and its leader, Pablo Escobar.
Escobar took advantage of the massive demand for cocaine in the United States, and at his height shipped roughly $420,000,000 per week, using the money to wage domestic terrorism on Colombia, killing over 3,000 people, and pumping even more drugs into America. Due to the Drug War's crackdown on cocaine, cannabis, and other narcotics, the market demand has led to the rise of murderous drug cartels responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The Drug War is responsible for the incarceration of millions of non-violent drug offenders, the theft of millions of dollars worth of assets from poor minority communities, the privatization of our prisons, and of course, for the deaths of millions and the rise of some of the most dangerous crime syndicates the world has ever seen, not to mention that drug use and sales have increased exponentially since the war was declared. We need to end this war.
