1 War on Drugs

In this chapter we will explore how the DEA’s drug scheduling and the War on Drugs was politically motivated by then President Richard Nixon. This scheduling will be evaluated considering fatality statistics.  The effects of the War on Drugs will also be covered.  In June 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a critical report declaring: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.”^[1] The ACLU reports that despite being 5% of the world’s population, America has more than 20% of the world’s prison population, many of them for a drug offense.^[2] The following chart from the Prison Policy Initiative puts it in perspective:^[3]

Legitimate psychedelic research was another major casualty of the War on Drugs.  The irony is that this failed war did not accomplish what it purportedly was supposed to do, i.e. significantly decrease illegal drug use. Instead, we lost decades of research that could have helped reduce needless suffering.

“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” (Baum, 2016).^[4]

Read

1. Rat Park Comic by Stuart McMillen
2. Drug War History by Drug Policy Alliance
3. War on Drugs Timeline
4. DEA Drug Scheduling

Watch

Tulia Texas: Scenes from the Drug War (22 min)

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (13 min)