{"id":1894,"date":"2024-08-15T18:40:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-15T18:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/?p=1894"},"modified":"2025-09-01T18:15:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T18:15:47","slug":"war-on-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/war-on-drugs\/","title":{"rendered":"The War on Drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
What is the War on Drugs?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The war on drugs is not a war in the defense of public health; it is, from its very\u00a0foundation, a racist political agenda created to control non-white people by\u00a0creating laws to strip them of their rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
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In the 1970s, towards the end of the Vietnam war, anti-war protestors were\u00a0becoming more prominent. The very recent Civil Rights Movement was\u00a0creating a more equitable world for non-white people. The rise of the\u00a0\u201chippies,\u201d and the idea of world peace brought together millions of people \u2013\u00a0and this was a problem for those whose power relies not on how well they\u00a0include others, but how well the can subdue other people groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in 1971, President Richard Nixon declared \u201cwar on drugs.\u201d Nixon Aid John\u00a0Ehrlichman said \u201cYou want to know what this was really all about\u2026the Nixon\u00a0White House\u2026had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You\u00a0understand what I\u2019m saying. We knew we couldn\u2019t make it illegal to be either\u00a0against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with\u00a0marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we\u00a0could disrupt those communities\u2026Did we know we were lying about the\u00a0drugs? Of course we did.\u201d Scan the QR code at the bottom for a link to the full\u00a0quote.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Author Michelle Alexander\u2019s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in\u00a0the Age of Colorblindness describes how the so-called \u201cWar on Drugs\u201d is\u00a0actually a war on African Americans.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The War on Drugs increased police funding and outfitted regular police units\u00a0with military-grade equipment. More dramatic arrests (including the kind of\u00a0\u2018no-knock warrants\u2019 that resulted in Breonna Taylor\u2019s death in late 2020) have\u00a0occurred, and harsher punishments for non-violent drug crimes but have done\u00a0nothing to actually curb drug use. In reality, overdose deaths have increased.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Additionally, the misdemeanor and felony charges make it difficult to get a\u00a0job, limiting opportunities for social and economic advancement. In many\u00a0states, it also limits your ability to vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a system designed to separate, vilify, and control in order\u00a0to retain power for the few, the war on drugs continues to\u00a0only benefit those in power.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander <\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The War on Drugs: A History by David Farber<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What is the War on Drugs? The war on drugs is not a war in the defense of public health; it is, from its very\u00a0foundation, a racist political agenda created to control non-white people by\u00a0creating laws to strip them of their rights.\u00a0 In the 1970s, towards the end of the Vietnam war, anti-war protestors were\u00a0becoming…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civil-rights-movement","category-racism","category-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1899,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions\/1899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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