Richard Nixon's The War On Drugs

The history associated with drug criminalization in America contains more political motivators than concerns for public health and safety. The biggest politically motivated aspect to drug deterrence comes from Richard Nixon’s s war on drugs in 1971 which has created a system that discriminates against minority groups and has had little effect on deterring drug use. The war on drugs has thus far been notoriously noted for discriminating against people of color by pumping drugs into their communities and then imposing severe criminal consequences for drug possession, use, or distribution. In fact, one of Nixon’s aides John Ehrlichmen stated that the war on drugs was intended for the following:
“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 black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, 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. 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.” (“A Brief History of the Drug War”).
Since the 1970s war on drugs, people of color have disproportionately made up the vast amount of drug arrests despite whites and blacks using drugs at the same rate (Goldberg and Evans).
By dumping vast amounts of drugs in black communities then making drug use or distribution a felon, Nixon has effectively been able to dismantle the black community and label them as “common thugs”. One very interesting aspect for the discrimination of black people is the consequences for crack cocaine and powdered cocaine. In a the section “The War on Drugs” in the book titled The War on Drugs by Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans, they explain how the punishment for crack cocaine (which is widely used by blacks) receive a punishment 100 times harsher than that of powdered cocaine (which is widely used by whites). They provide evidence that under federal law “it takes only 5 grams of crack cocaine to trigger a five year minimum sentence. But it takes 500 grams of powdered cocaine to trigger the same sentence” (Goldberg and
Evans). (Insert graph highlighting demographics in prison. Gale opposing viewpoints) Even more startling is that opiates and marijuana have typically been used for spiritual or medical purposes throughout history but discrimination and fearing immigrants has vastly contributed to government interference for drug use.
Wilm Mistral illustrates the opium wars in this book titled The Emerging Perspectives on Substance Misuse. He explain that in the 1800’s the British began supplying the Chinese with opiates since it it was considered an economic benefit to the UK which then contributed to the Chinese relying heavily on opiates as a way of relieving pain since the active ingredient in it was morphine. At the same time, manufacturing of morphine and heroin began which in 1868 brought the British Pharmacy Act. The pharmacy act was designed to prevent overdose over widespread opiates and held medical professionals responsible for prescribing them. Once opium addicted Chinese immigrants migrated to the U.S. to build the transcontinental railroad on the west coast the American government started demonizing the use of opium by creating literature “portraying opium use as squalid and violent, and purified morphine and heroin became widely available for injection” (Mistral). Opiates were then considered officially illegal in 1914 with the Harrison Narcotics Act (Mistral). The chinese demonization of a once widely spread drug is a prime example the discriminatory politics of drug use in the United States. Through the War on Drugs and the history associated with the
politics behind drug criminalization, it appears that the U.S. has more concern towards discrimination of people in the minority than the underlying health concerns for it’s citizens. Through drug criminalization once a person receives a felony for drug possession or use, it is vastly more difficult for people to reintegrate into society because felonies carry their own socioeconomic hurdles. Since drug discrimination targets people of color in poor inner city neighborhoods this creates a cycle of poverty since by making it harder for felons to receive government assistance and loans for education. This cycle likely contributes to higher drug use and distribution because social stigmas now make it harder to find better jobs which makes it easier for to turn to drugs to erase the pain or to sell them to make some money. Drugs need to be decriminalized in order to minimize the poverty inducing effects of the overwhelming harsh consequences that targets poor people in inner city neighborhoods.