Ronald Reagan War on Drugs Peer Reviewed Articles

The Early on Stages of Drug Prohibition

Many currently illegal drugs, such as marijuana, opium, coca, and psychedelics take been used for thousands of years for both medical and spiritual purposes. And so why are some drugs legal and other drugs illegal today? It'southward not based on whatever scientific assessment of the relative risks of these drugs – but information technology has everything to do with who is associated with these drugs.

The first anti-opium laws in the 1870s were directed at Chinese immigrants. The commencement anti-cocaine laws in the early 1900s were directed at black men in the South. The first anti-marijuana laws, in the Midwest and the Southwest in the 1910s and 20s, were directed at Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans. Today, Latino and especially black communities are still discipline to wildly asymmetric drug enforcement and sentencing practices.

Nixon and the Generation Gap

In the 1960s, every bit drugs became symbols of youthful rebellion, social upheaval, and political dissent, the regime halted scientific enquiry to evaluate their medical safety and efficacy.

In June 1971, President Nixon declared a "state of war on drugs." He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug command agencies, and pushed through measures such every bit mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants.

A top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, afterwards admitted: "You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and blackness people. You understand what I'k maxim. Nosotros knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either confronting the war or blackness, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, nosotros could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break upward their meetings, and vilify them night after nighttime on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."Nixon temporarily placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs, awaiting review by a commission he appointed led past Republican Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer.

In 1972, the committee unanimously recommended decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana for personal use. Nixon ignored the report and rejected its recommendations.

Between 1973 and 1977, however, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession. In Jan 1977, President Jimmy Carter was inaugurated on a entrada platform that included marijuana decriminalization. In October 1977, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for personal utilize.

Within just a few years, though, the tide had shifted. Proposals to decriminalize marijuana were abased every bit parents became increasingly concerned about high rates of teen marijuana use. Marijuana was ultimately caught up in a broader cultural backfire against the perceived permissiveness of the 1970s.

This video from hip hop fable Jay Z and acclaimed artist Molly Crabapple depicts the drug war's devastating impact on the Black community from decades of biased constabulary enforcement.

The video traces the drug war from President Nixon to the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws to the emerging aboveground marijuana market that is poised to make legal millions for wealthy investors doing the same thing that generations of people of color have been arrested and locked up for. After you picket the video, read on to learn more about the discriminatory history of the state of war on drugs.

The 1980s and 90s: Drug Hysteria and Skyrocketing Incarceration Rates

The presidency of Ronald Reagan marked the get-go of a long flow of skyrocketing rates of incarceration, largely thank you to his unprecedented expansion of the drug war. The number of people backside bars for irenic drug constabulary offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 past 1997.

Public concern most illicit drug use built throughout the 1980s, largely due to media portrayals of people addicted to the smokeable form of cocaine dubbed "crack." Shortly after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, his wife, Nancy Reagan, began a highly-publicized anti-drug entrada, coining the slogan "Just Say No."

This prepare the phase for the zero tolerance policies implemented in the mid-to-late 1980s. Los Angeles Police Master Daryl Gates, who believed that "casual drug users should be taken out and shot," founded the DARE drug educational activity program, which was apace adopted nationwide despite the lack of evidence of its effectiveness. The increasingly harsh drug policies too blocked the expansion of syringe access programs and other harm reduction policies to reduce the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS.

In the tardily 1980s, a political hysteria about drugs led to the passage of callous penalties in Congress and state legislatures that quickly increased the prison house population. In 1985, the proportion of Americans polled who saw drug abuse as the nation'due south "number 1 problem" was just 2-6 percentage. The figure grew through the residuum of the 1980s until, in September 1989, it reached a remarkable 64 pct – ane of the most intense fixations by the American public on any issue in polling history. Inside less than a year, however, the figure plummeted to less than ten per centum, as the media lost interest. The draconian policies enacted during the hysteria remained, nevertheless, and connected to upshot in escalating levels of arrests and incarceration.

Although Pecker Clinton advocated for treatment instead of incarceration during his 1992 presidential campaign, later on his first few months in the White House he reverted to the drug war strategies of his Republican predecessors by continuing to escalate the drug state of war. Notoriously, Clinton rejected a U.South. Sentencing Commission recommendation to eliminate the disparity between scissure and powder cocaine sentences.

He also rejected, with the encouragement of drug arbiter General Barry McCaffrey, Health Secretary Donna Shalala'south advice to end the federal ban on funding for syringe access programs. Yet, a month before leaving function, Clinton asserted in a Rolling Stone interview that "we really demand a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment" of people who use drugs, and said that marijuana use "should be decriminalized."

At the superlative of the drug war hysteria in the belatedly 1980s and early on 1990s, a motion emerged seeking a new arroyo to drug policy. In 1987, Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese founded the Drug Policy Foundation – describing it every bit the "loyal opposition to the state of war on drugs." Prominent conservatives such as William Buckley and Milton Friedman had long advocated for ending drug prohibition, as had civil libertarians such every bit longtime ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser. In the late 1980s they were joined by Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, Federal Judge Robert Sweet, Princeton professor Ethan Nadelmann, and other activists, scholars and policymakers.

In 1994, Nadelmann founded The Lindesmith Center as the first U.S. project of George Soros' Open Order Institute. In 2000, the growing Middle merged with the Drug Policy Foundation to create the Drug Policy Alliance.

The New Millennium: The Pendulum Shifts – Slowly – Toward Sensible Drug Policy

George W. Bush arrived in the White House as the drug war was running out of steam – notwithstanding he allocated more money than e'er to it. His drug czar, John Walters, zealously focused on marijuana and launched a major campaign to promote educatee drug testing. While rates of illicit drug use remained constant, overdose fatalities rose rapidly.

The era of George W. Bush besides witnessed the rapid escalation of the militarization of domestic drug constabulary enforcement. By the end of Bush's term, there were well-nigh twoscore,000 paramilitary-style SWAT raids on Americans every twelvemonth – mostly for irenic drug law offenses, ofttimes misdemeanors. While federal reform mostly stalled under Bush, state-level reforms finally began to slow the growth of the drug war.

Politicians at present routinely admit to having used marijuana, and fifty-fifty cocaine, when they were younger. When Michael Bloomberg was questioned during his 2001 mayoral campaign near whether he had ever used marijuana, he said, "You bet I did – and I enjoyed information technology." Barack Obama as well candidly discussed his prior cocaine and marijuana use: "When I was a kid, I inhaled oft – that was the signal."

Public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of sensible reforms that expand health-based approaches while reducing the role of criminalization in drug policy.

Marijuana reform has gained unprecedented momentum throughout the Americas. Alaska, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia accept legalized marijuana for adults. In Dec 2013, Uruguay became the first state in the world to legally regulate marijuana. Canada legalized marijuana for adults in 2018.

In response to a worsening overdose epidemic, dozens of U.S. states passed laws to increase access to the overdose antitoxin, naloxone, equally well every bit "911 Good Samaritan" laws to encourage people to seek medical help in the event of an overdose.

Yet the assault on American citizens and others continues, with 700,000 people still arrested for marijuana offenses each yr and virtually 500,000 people still backside bars for nothing more than than a drug law violation.

President Obama, despite supporting several successful policy changes – such as reducing the fissure/powder sentencing disparity, ending the ban on federal funding for syringe access programs, and ending federal interference with state medical marijuana laws – did not shift the majority of drug policy funding to a health-based approach.

Trump Era: DPA Pushes Forward Despite Challenges

The Trump assistants threatened to accept us backward toward a 1980s-fashion drug war. President Trump started building a wall to keep drugs out of the country, and called for harsher sentences for drug law violations and the death penalization for people who sell drugs. He likewise resurrected disproven "just say no" messaging aimed at youth.

2020 brought the additional challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic – a public wellness crisis that exposed the systemic issues within our social club and revealed just how deeply the drug state of war permeates these systems. People who interact with these systems are unable to take the most basic of steps to forestall the spread of COVID-nineteen – including those in jail or prison house, the homeless, people with substance use disorder, those who rely on admission to medication-assisted treatment or medical marijuana, and immigrants. During this crisis, it is harder for them to engage in social distancing, and to access necessary medication assisted treatment – such as methadone or buprenorphine, or medical marijuana – as well every bit other health and damage reduction resources.

Despite these obstacles, we at the Drug Policy Brotherhood pushed frontwards with awe-inspiring drug policy reforms in the 2020 elections. In a historic, paradigm-shifting win and arguably the biggest blow to the war on drugs to date, Oregon voters passed Measure 110, the nation's first all-drug decriminalization measure out. This confirms a substantial shift in public support in favor of treating drug employ with health services rather than with criminalization.

Marijuana reform likewise won big. Voters in Arizona, New Jersey, Montana, and South Dakota passed measures to legalize marijuana for developed use. It was also a historic year for medical marijuana, with victories in Mississippi and South Dakota.

All across the state, in liberal states and bourgeois ones, people made their voices heard. And they said loud and clear that it is time to end the drug war.

New Administration, New Opportunities

At present Joe Biden is President of the United states of america – and with every new administration brings new opportunities.

Biden has stated that information technology was a "mistake" to support legislation that ramped upwards the drug war and increased incarceration, including the '94 crime nib, when he was in the U.Southward. Senate. He at present says we need a compassionate approach to problematic drug utilize.

At the Drug Policy Alliance, we concord. And nosotros're gear up to make modify. Nosotros look forward to working together on a humane approach to drugs that reduces the part of criminalization and increases access to health based treatment and harm reduction services for people who need them.

We wait forward to a future where drug policies are shaped by science and compassion rather than political hysteria.

Learn about DPA's victories in marijuana reform, criminal justice reform, and harm reduction.

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Source: https://drugpolicy.org/issues/brief-history-drug-war

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