President Nixon 's The War On Drugs Essay Sample

The War on Drugs is a global campaign that was declared by President Richard Nixon in 1971. This campaign was started due to a surge in recreational drug use in the 1960s. While this is what likely led President Nixion to declare a War on Drugs and deem drug abuse as "public enemy number one", the War on Drugs can also be seen as a racially motivated legal campaign that helped keep President Nixon in office.  President Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, provided inside information suggesting that "the War on Drugs campaign had ulterior motives, which mainly involved helping Nixon keep his job." (H. Editor, 2017, para.4). Not only was the War on Drugs a political gain for Richard Nixon but it was also one that others after him could benefit from. The war on drugs is a political gain that was created to legally justify racial injustice.

Congressional Influence

In June 1986 during the peak of the crack epidemic NBA player Len Bias died due to a cocaine overdose. Democrats took advantage of this and started an anti-drug campaign. This campaign was created to benefit the November election but was also used as a platform for the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. On October 27, 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug abuse act which was used to implement stiffer penalties in Federal drug cases. 1.7 billion dollars was allocated to help decrease the trend of overdoses and help combat drug use. While the money was used to create the mandatory minimum sentence for drug offense cases it resulted in mass incarceration and the majority of those arrested were minorities. The reason the law resulted in mass incarceration for black Americans was because of the fact that there were "longer prison sentences for offenses involving the same amount of crack cocaine (used more often by black Americans) as powder cocaine (used more often by white Americans). Five grams of crack triggered an automatic five-year sentence, while it took 500 grams of powder cocaine to merit the same sentence."  (H. Editor, 2017, para.4). Nixon's policy chief, John Ehrlichman was quoted as 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 vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.' " (H. Editor, 2017, para.4). Ehrlichman was quoted saying this over 20 years after President Nixon had declared a War on Drugs. This shows that the campaign was used to not only benefit politicians but created a narrative towards the public about African-Americans and that this global campaign was foundationally built on systematic racism in the United States.

Influence on Community

Because the War on Drugs was targeted towards minority communities this of course heavily impacted minority communities. Overtime laws were put in place that led to mass incarceration with the majority of inmates being minorities. At the time African-American men have arrested 13 times the rate compared to white men on drug charges. According to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, Eric L. Jenson et al. states that "Incarceration has become the sentence of choice for drug offenses at the Federal level and in most States…The war on drugs has also produced an unprecedented racial disproportion of inmates in the prison system…it is necessary to expand the inquiry to examine the societal consequences of public policies that disenfranchise so many people from a positive future, particularly racial minorities" (Jenson, 2004). This shows that any amount of drugs over the legal limit meant sending someone to jail. Not only were there laws put in place to send people to jail but there were laws that would impact their life after. In 1998, Congress passed the Higher Education Act. The Higher Education act can delay or deny financial aid to anyone that has ever been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony drug offense. A drug offense could also " get you and your whole family kicked out of public housing. 32 states ban anyone convicted of a drug felony from collecting food stamps." (Newman, 2013). While most of the damage of the war on drugs has been done and has negatively impacted minorities by associating them with dangerous drugs and the prison system, drug reform is slowly happening in the United States.