politics

The US government, under both major parties, has spent decades and trillions of stolen dollars on the war on drugs. This completely destabilized Central and South America leading to countless deaths and empowering criminal gangs. Then we get mad when people try to flee those countries for a safer life in the US.

SOME things, like neoliberalism, you can blame on BOTH American political parties. But the “War On Drugs” is a Republican child. Richard Nixon’s domestic policy advisor confessed in 1994 that it targeted rights-seeking blacks and anti-war hippies, their political enemies:

https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

Should Jimmy Carter have done more with his supermajority to end the drug war? Sure. Carter’s key legacy is actually neoliberal deregulation. 

Reagan caught the drug culture-war pass from Nixon and the neoliberal pass from Carter like a champion wide receiver. I grew up in the 1980s. Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign was ubiquitous.

Drug abuse has *never* varied with race or income-level. Reagan’s super-severe crack VS powder cocaine punishment caused decades of black family separation and federal handouts to corporate prisons. Marijuana prosecution also depopulated disproportionately black areas.

This is partly why today’s black family wealth 1/8 that of whites.

Chocolate rainmaker. Singer. Thinker. Voice

Yep. And the slight gains that progressive drug policy has made are now being undone by recovery capitalists who know which buttons to mash to get people to stop thinking and start feeling.

backend eng; full-stack curious

writer, icon, retired rave queen