So weird when people say the war on drugs was about racial superiority. Sure some people promoting it were racists, but a lot of voices in drug ridden communities demanded action against the addicts and criminals. Shockingly enough (to those not paying attention), the communities with the largest drug usage suffered the most from drug related crime.
There were multiple potential solutions to drug use/crime. The chosen solution was the one that took away the freedom of millions of POC without actually solving the problem. And when it failed, they just doubled down even harder, because of course it didn't actually fail.
I don’t believe there are multiple potential solutions that anyone in the 70’s believed worked better than throwing criminals in jail. To this day it is a primary possibility for why crime receded so quickly in the 90’s.
Tell that to the millions of (mostly black and brown) people whose lives were ruined due to possession or sale of small amounts of cannabis. I’m sure as states legalize cannabis we’ll see a spike in crime now?
Even if we agree that tough-on-crime works (I do not agree, but say I did), the way the war on drugs applied tough on crime was predominately on people of color. If you were white and sold weed you were MUCH less likely to go to jail than if you were black or latino. We could have locked up all those white weed dealers and driven the crime rate down even lower. So at very very very best the war on drugs was the right policy applied in a racist way. At very best.
