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  • Essay / Why the War on Drugs Was Really a War on Race

    Many have heard the term “war on drugs.” To many, this may seem like a bold but necessary response to America's drug problem. After all, drug addiction is a major problem in the United States. It tears families apart and has devastating consequences on the lives of the entire country. In the 1970s, there were many movements that President Richard Nixon felt compelled to fight against. He warned that people who participated in these acts would be apprehended and spoke frequently of the need to follow and respect American laws, speaking mainly on drugs. This ushered in the era of treating drug abuse and dependence as a crime problem rather than a health problem. The “war on drugs” was never intended as a fight against harmful drugs, but as a powerful movement to tear apart and incarcerate black communities after the abolition of slavery in the United States. As President Nixon presented this idea to the American people, the next president, Ronald Reagan, launched a full-fledged “war on drugs.” Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay The history behind the “war on drugs” is worth exploring. To do this, we must look at the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States, which states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude.” This seems fair enough, and even quite logical. But this amendment contains a clause that makes all the difference. This clause states: “Except as punishment for crime of which the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to its jurisdiction.” » Many, myself included, agree that this clause is a loophole that leaves room for a massive increase in the number of people incarcerated. According to Flores A. Forbes, a formerly incarcerated author: “Our ultimate target is the millions of formerly incarcerated people who are treated as former slaves and, after their emancipation from prison, as second-class citizens. We collaborate with the civic, private and public sectors to organize an effort that is not only about social justice, but also about economic justice. The “exception” clause represents, in essence, an economic detour toward the true freedom of a people.” This loophole in the 13th Amendment leaves too much room for discrimination and inhumanely cheap labor for imprisoned individuals. While I agree that those who intentionally cause harm or violate the just laws of the United States should be reprimanded, this was not the case after the law was abolished. slavery in 1865. Before that, black people contributed significantly to the economy and workforce of the American South. When slavery was finally abolished, the economy suffered a significant loss. In a racist attempt to offset this negative effect on the economy, southern blacks were discriminated against and often arrested for minor offenses. They were put in prison and incarcerated so that our government would receive free labor to compensate for the loss of slave labor. According to Andrea Armstrong, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, “What we're seeing after the passage of the 13th Amendment is several different things converging. First, the text of the 13th Amendment allows for involuntary servitude upon conviction of a crime. At the same time, the "black codes" in the South created new types of crimes, including misdemeanorsbehavioral – disrespect, that sort of thing. Black people were arrested for minor offenses, such as loitering or being “disrespectful,” fueling the idea that black people were inherently dangerous or “animal” in some way. The demonization of the black community was incredibly present in the news, media and television. They were described as criminals, rapists and drug addicts. According to racialquitytools.org, “Although many aspects of the real lived experience of black men tend to be missing in the media's collective representation, some aspects are very present and are in fact exaggerated. Although we may have been subconsciously conditioned to think that black people are inherently more dangerous and more likely to commit crimes than white people, this is the mindset that the media wants you to believe. According to Travis L. Dixon, "Perhaps the most discussed pattern is the association between black men and criminality, particularly on television news – where they are not only likely to appear as criminals, but also d 'be shown in a way that makes them appear like criminals. particularly threatening (compared to white criminals, for example). Black people are overrepresented among violent crime perpetrators when comparing media coverage to arrest rates, but they are underrepresented in the more sympathetic roles of victim and law enforcement. So, this proves the idea that black men are not more likely to commit crimes than white men, but we have been programmed to believe otherwise. While all of this was happening in the late 1800s and 1900s, when Richard Nixon was elected as President of the United States in 1969, the prison population in the United States began to increase. Richard Nixon was a Republican from California who previously served as vice president and senator. He believed in strong conservative values ​​and often spoke about issues that were "tearing apart" America. The late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States were famous for many movements, such as women's liberation, the Black Panthers, gay liberation, and the anti-war movement. President Nixon was quoted as saying, “There can be no progress in America without respect for the law.” » He has often spoken of fighting these "dangerous" social movements and pledged to take all necessary measures to exhaust them. President Nixon said, “We need an all-out war against the evils we see in our cities. Federal spending on local law enforcement will double. We must wage what I have called “total war” against public enemy No. 1 in the United States; the problem of dangerous drugs. President Nixon coined the term "war on drugs", which ushered in the era when drug abuse and dependence was seen as a crime problem rather than a health problem. According to Nixon, “America’s public enemy No. 1 is drug abuse.” President Nixon felt compelled to combat these problems because he believed they were causing rates of crime and drug abuse to skyrocket, or at least that was what we were led to believe. . John Ehrlichman, one of Richard Nixon's top advisors, was filmed saying: "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House thereafter, had two enemies: the anti-war left and the black people. Do you understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be against the war or to be black, but by getting the public to associate hippies with marijuana and black people withheroin, and then by heavily criminalizing both, we could disrupt these communities. We could arrest their leaders, search their homes, interrupt their meetings and defame them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about drugs? Of course we did. This statement devalued all of the President's previous assertions and positions on this issue, but most of the American public turned a blind eye to this revealed truth. During Nixon's time as president, incarceration rates continued to rise. Hundreds of thousands of people are sent to prison for simple possession of marijuana, which is a very low-level offense. Most of those sent to prison were black men. The oppressor could not be “slavery,” but it could be “prison,” which was apparently the same thing. Black men were torn from their families and thrown into prison for the same crimes that white men would receive with a simple slap. wrist. In 1981, Ronald Reagan, a former Hollywood actor, was elected President of the United States. Voters loved him because of his public speaking skills and his optimistic views on American politics. His wife, Nancy Reagan, was also popular in the public eye. During Reagan's time as president, he made many drastic advances that even former President Richard Nixon avoided. While President Nixon talked mostly about the metaphorical "war on drugs," President Reagan moved toward the literal war on drugs, with First Lady Nancy Reagan as spokesperson. According to drugpolicy.org, “Richard Nixon officially launched the War on Drugs in 1971, but his war was modest compared to Reagan's. Reagan's presidency ushered in a long period of soaring incarceration rates, thanks in large part to his unprecedented expansion of the war on drugs. The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law violations increased from 50,000 in 1980 to more than 400,000 in 1997” (Newman, para. 2). Nancy Reagan launched a drug prevention campaign called “Just Say No.” The main goal of the advertising campaign was to discourage children from using and abusing recreational drugs by providing various ways to say "no." In her “Just Say No” campaign announcement, Nancy Reagan was quoted as saying, “There is an epidemic of drug and alcohol abuse in this country, and no one is safe from it. Not you, not me, and certainly not our children. Because this epidemic bears their names. Many of you may be thinking, "well, drugs don't concern me," but it does concern you, because of the way they tear our lives apart and because they aim to destroy the shine of lives of our sons and daughters. of the United States. » While the “Just Say No” campaign was in full swing, there were also a lot of unclear things going on behind the scenes. President Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Act of 1986, which "was a war on drugs law passed by the United States Congress." Among other things, they transformed the federal supervised release system from a rehabilitative system to a penal system. The 1986 law also banned analogues of controlled substances. The bill provides new mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, including marijuana. This bill targeted black and poverty-stricken communities and sent thousands of people to prison for a first-time, non-violent drug offense. At the same time, the more expensive, powdered form of crack.