Post by Jillian Quashie on Oct 15, 2016 1:27:17 GMT
The key factors that drove the “war on drugs” were fear, racism, hate, power, crack-cocaine, cash grant, forfeiture, and most of all elections. Richard Nixon who ran his presidential election on “law and order” against civil rights activists in 1968 took his racial views even further when he shouted for a “war on drug” and called it “public enemy number one.” However, the present-day drug war did not reach its full potential until 1982. President Ronald Reagan “war on drugs” declaration in 1982 came around the same time drug use was decreasing, and when most Americans believed that drugs was not the country more serious problems. It should be noted, that crack-cocaine did not hit inner-city neighborhoods until 1985.
President Reagan knew that the country especially law enforcement did not value his views on the drug war. Therefore, President Reagan threw millions of dollars as “cash grant” to every level of law enforcement agencies as an incentive to make the drug war of great importance. President Reagan created the Byrne Grant Funds where about 90 percent of the funding goes to narcotics task force. The Comprehensive Drug Abused Prevention and Control Act which was amended in 1984, where state and local police agencies can keep up to 80% property seized, became a big incentive for law enforcement to become more motivated on fighting the “war on drugs.”
The war on drugs was racially motivated as a legal loophole to chastised against the “Civil Rights Movement.” It was also use as a form of distraction from our nation real problems, and a platform for elections and reelections. The drug war has become a legal modern day slave trade due to outrageous arrest and conviction. “Slavery is said to have three attributes, ownership, possession, or control of a person, denial citizenship rights, and denial of labor rights to sell one’s own labor.” This modern-day slavery the “war on drugs” has denied African American’s their citizenship. It is devastating that after many lynching, beating, and other suffering that blacks had to endure to have the right to vote, the government has found a legal loophole to denied African Americans the right to vote by imprisonment. People of color were viewed as second class or Un- American in the older system of Jim Crow, and the same can be said about the drug war.
Alexander, M. (n.d.). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.
President Reagan knew that the country especially law enforcement did not value his views on the drug war. Therefore, President Reagan threw millions of dollars as “cash grant” to every level of law enforcement agencies as an incentive to make the drug war of great importance. President Reagan created the Byrne Grant Funds where about 90 percent of the funding goes to narcotics task force. The Comprehensive Drug Abused Prevention and Control Act which was amended in 1984, where state and local police agencies can keep up to 80% property seized, became a big incentive for law enforcement to become more motivated on fighting the “war on drugs.”
The war on drugs was racially motivated as a legal loophole to chastised against the “Civil Rights Movement.” It was also use as a form of distraction from our nation real problems, and a platform for elections and reelections. The drug war has become a legal modern day slave trade due to outrageous arrest and conviction. “Slavery is said to have three attributes, ownership, possession, or control of a person, denial citizenship rights, and denial of labor rights to sell one’s own labor.” This modern-day slavery the “war on drugs” has denied African American’s their citizenship. It is devastating that after many lynching, beating, and other suffering that blacks had to endure to have the right to vote, the government has found a legal loophole to denied African Americans the right to vote by imprisonment. People of color were viewed as second class or Un- American in the older system of Jim Crow, and the same can be said about the drug war.
Alexander, M. (n.d.). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.