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I haven't watched the video linked yet but have read the history of marijuana laws and IMO race was one of the reasons they were initially implemented. Corporations such as DuPont also had a strong influence in making marijuana illegal due to a recent patent of their inferior nylon product. Hemp was seen as a major competitor. (Surprise, surprise yet another collusion between private business and public administration)
It goes without question that The War on "Drugs" is a racist war. It was initially launched after Nixon's National Commission recommended that marijuana should no longer be a criminal offense and found that there are no serious health risks. The report was shredded and in Nixon's words "an all out war" was launched. Some say a major reason was to curtail Vietnam war protestors. Arrests that year shot up by over 100,000 and have never come down.
America has 5% of the World's Population, yet nearly 25% of the World's Prison Population. In 1982, 1 in 77 adults were in the correctional system, totaling 2.2 million people. In 2007, the prison population totaled 7.3 million, or 1 in every 31 adults.
-7.9% of sentenced prisoners in federal prisons on September 30, 2009 were in for violent crimes
-52.4% of sentenced prisoners in state prisons at year end 2008 were in for violent crimes
-21.6% of convicted inmates in jails in 2002 (latest available data by type of offense) were in for violent crimes.
Today the longest and costliest war in US history is solely fought in deindustrialized areas made up largely of impoverished minorities even when illegal drug use is equal on any measured racial demographic and our country is currently in the midst of a legal drug overdose epidemic.
More people are overdosing on legal drugs now than during any other drug epidemic in our nation's history.
Where is the outrage? During the crack epidemic entire communities were torn apart via mass imprisonment, breakdown of families, increased dependance on the government, the non-sensical 100-1 Crack-Cocaine sentencing rule.
"Drug death rates are currently more than twice what they were during the peak years of crack cocaine mortality in the early 1990s, and four to five times higher than the rates during the year of heroin mortality peak in 1975" Overdose Death Rate Surges, Legal Drugs Are Mostly to Blame | Alternet
Considering our legal drug epidemic in addition to the fact that 2/3rds of the budget for The War on "Drugs" is spent on a plant that hasn't killed anyone in thousands of years I don't think I'll ever understand why there is still a hint of debate on this matter. It will be a battle with for-profit prison corporations lobbying for stricter and more encompassing laws but NOW is the time to stand up for what is right. Join your local NORML chapter today.
The Reagan Admin put the "W" in the War on Drugs in response to the cocain/crack epidemic.
Most nations have drug laws and don't have as diverse population as the U.S. does.
Nations that impose the stricted consequenses tend to have the least problems with addiction to hard core drugs. These nations don't spend a dime on attempting to reduce poppy and coca crops in other countries.
Believing that addiction only impacts the addict is either extreme selfishness or ignorance.
Shoplifting, return scams and B&E are common crimes of people addicted to hard core drugs.
There's a huge difference between simple posession and drug trafficking.
Addcition to prescription medications is an epidemic in the U.S.and the majority of such addicts are not a minority group.
Drug laws are definitely inconsistently enforced as well. The penalties and punishments are different for people using meth vs crack. The system punishes the low level drug dealers the hardest, and not the higher level distributors profiting on the trade.
If all drugs are "bad" then people doing any drug/caught with possession/etc should be punished with an equal degree of harshness and consistency.
If you look into this countries history the reason why drugs like Heroin and cocaine are illegal has nothing to do with the adverse health affects but it was more to do with the "orientals" who used opium. This is why drugs were first outlawed because before than you had house wives taking "mommies little helper" and there were no problems at least according to the government at the time. Also I've been told that crack was actually started by the cia I pretty much doubt that. But you can see the harmful effects it's had on the poorer population in this country.
Seems likely as regards the very first drug laws decades and decades ago. Saying they are pervasively and inextricably linked to race, though, doesn't sound persuasive to me when you get past the 1950s especially.
The thing is, they say this drug used to be legal. When a certain demographic began using it on a large scale, then it became illegal.
What's not demonstrated is that it was the demographic that caused the drug to be made illegal rather than the largescale usage of it.
I mean yes LSD was the drug of choice for hippies. Then it was made illegal. Was that because hippies were using it? Or was the fact that hippies started using what caused it to be used so much that something was done about it? There's no evidence or argument made about whether any other group that started using enough of it would've made it become illegal as well.
Alcohol was made illegal when the primary users of it were white men, supposedly the most privileged members of society, and the people complaining about it were women, supposedly oppressed. So that would tend to argue against the pervasive racism theory.
Racism arguments are more persuasive when it comes to things like marijuana and opium because those events happened when rampant legal discrimination was still in place.
LSD, extasy, meth, crack? Not so convinced on those.
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