Medha Rapuri

U.S. History

Dr. Bresie

16 May 2024

The War on Drugs: Crack, Cocaine, and Corruption

Alton Lucas is unable to chaperone his children on their school trips. While this ability

may not sound like a major privilege, he also is unable to vote, serve on a jury, and receive

public benefits. Despite being a business owner, father, and sober for over 30 years, his addiction

to crack cocaine during the 1980s overshadows all his progress.1 However, Lucas’s story is not

unique and is easily piled with the millions of other victims of the War on Drugs. With the aim

of curtailing drug abuse and trafficking through stringent laws and enforcement agencies, the

War on Drugs was a nationwide initiative launched in the United States in the 1970s. It involves

various strategies, including increased law enforcement efforts, stricter penalties for drug-related

offenses, and international cooperation to disrupt drug supply chains. Unfortunately, these

methods made no impact on the drug abuse epidemic, instead, these efforts have led to the mass

incarceration of non-violent offenders.2 The policies and enforcement tactics of the War on

Drugs have resulted in law enforcement agencies adopting aggressive measures and

disproportionately targeting marginalized communities. Meanwhile, drug trafficking agencies

have adapted to carry out more sophisticated operations, thereby perpetuating the cycle of

injustice against Black communities.

1
Aaron Morrison, "50-year war on drugs imprisoned millions of Black Americans," PBS News Hour, last modified
July 26, 2021, accessed April 28, 2024, [Link]
millions-of-black-americans.
2
[Link] Editors, "War on Drugs," HISTORY, last modified December 17, 2019, accessed April 22, 2024,
[Link]
 On June 17, 1971, Nixon declared to the public that “America’s public enemy number

one” was drug abuse.3 From that day, America had enacted a War on Drugs. Unfortunately, the

origins of these policies and enforcement tactics are just as controversial as their outcome. John

Erlichman, Nixon’s domestic policy chief, stated in an interview that “The Nixon campaign in

1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black

people . . . 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.”4 Through his initiative, Nixon

implemented harsher enforcement and prison sentences for drug-related crimes, increased

funding for drug-control agencies, and founded the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse, an

office that provided drug abuse treatment plans to the public. Most importantly, Nixon

established the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), a police organization that specializes in

enforcing laws and regulations concerning controlled substances in the United States.5 Within

the Nixon administration, drug abuse was labeled as a major problem, despite declining rates of

drug abuse and not being a major concern for most communities at the time Nixon enacted this

war.6 The Nixon administration’s policies led to law enforcement agencies adopting aggressive

and racially selective tactics. These practices, initiated during the Nixon era, have persisted and

become more prevalent in contemporary law enforcement.

After a doomed start from the Nixon administration, the Reagan Administration had

begun to escalate the War on Drugs. The first major piece of legislation that Ronald Reagan

3
[Link] Editors, "War on Drugs," HISTORY.
4 "Drug War Confessional," Vera Institute of Justice, accessed May 13, 2024, [Link]
prison-webumentary/the-past-is-never-dead/drug-war-confessional.
5 [Link] Editors, "War on Drugs," HISTORY.
6
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th ed. (New York:
New Press, 2020), 94.
enacted that changed law enforcement’s methods of handling drug abuse was the Comprehensive

Crime Control Act of 1984. This act created a federal sentencing commission and abolished

parole within the federal prison system. 7 While this piece of legislation did not specifically

concern the War on Drugs, it set a precedent for the escalation of punitive measures and stricter

enforcement tactics that would come to characterize Reagan's approach to combating drug-

related issues. In September 1986, President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagen

began the “Just Say No” Campaign, which aimed to discourage drug use among the youth. While

the intentions for this campaign were pure, since they were taken in charge by the First Lady, it

highlights the continuous negligence in approaching drug abuse as a public health issue. When

the war was enacted by the Nixon administration, they neglected to place significant effort into

rehabilitation services. In a public service announcement, Nancy Reagan expressed her concern

for the drug abuse epidemic within America, emphasizing it as an issue that concerns all

Americans. However, notably absent from her message was any mention of governmental efforts

to address addiction and its associated damage. 8 Instead, her sole focus was on urging individuals

to refuse drugs, overlooking the reality that the primary consumers of drugs are individuals

grappling with addiction.9 In essence, her message missed the mark in tackling the core issues

surrounding drug abuse. Reagan’s first major piece of legislation to combatting drug abuse was

his Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which allocated $1.7 billion towards the War on Drugs efforts

and implemented a set of "mandatory minimum" prison sentences for various drug-related

7 Vera Institute of Justice, "Justice In Focus: Crime Bill @20," Vera Institute of Justice, last modified September
2014, accessed May 14, 2024, [Link]
line#:~:text=October%2012%2C%201984%20%E2%80%93%20Comprehensive%20Crime,of%20their%20sentenc
es%20in%20prison.
8
"CNN: 1986: Nancy Reagan's 'Just say no' campaign," video, YouTube, posted by CNN, February 28, 2011,
accessed April 30, 2024, [Link]
9
National Institute on Drug Abuse, "Understanding Drug Use and Addiction DrugFacts," National Institute on Drug
Abuse, last modified June 6, 2018, accessed May 15, 2024,
[Link]
crimes.10 The millions of dollars in federal aid incentivized state and local law enforcement to

combat drug-related issues.11 The War on Drugs was initially met with skepticism by local law

enforcement, who had other pressing concerns. However, the Reagan Administration was

determined to ensure its success. Reagan delegated significant financial aid to law enforcement

agencies prioritizing drug law enforcement and providing them with incentives. Aside from

ensuring the constant involvement of law enforcement, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act significantly

contributed to the disproportionate incarceration of people of color. 12An automatic five-year

sentence would be imposed for the possession of 500 grams of powdered cocaine, but the same

penalty would occur for just five grams of crack cocaine.13 Despite sharing the same chemical

composition, the sole disparity between the two drugs lies in their demographics of use: crack

cocaine gained popularity within black communities, whereas powdered cocaine was more

prevalent among white communities.14 As stricter penalties were associated with crack cocaine,

it encouraged law enforcement to focus their efforts on black communities, exacerbating racial

profiling and disparities within the criminal justice system. While Nixon laid the detrimental

groundwork for the War on Drugs, the Reagan administration derailed any potential for positive

outcomes. Reagan's implementation of draconian policies and aggressive enforcement tactics

significantly undermined the initiative's effectiveness and exacerbated societal issues.

The fervent momentum of the Nixon and Reagan administrations was carried on by the

Bush and Clinton administrations. While there were no major developments within these

administrations, their continued enforcement efforts worsened the conditions of the War on

10 [Link] Editors, "War on Drugs," HISTORY.

Manwarren Generes, American Addiction Centers, last modified May 13, 2024, accessed May 14, 2024,
[Link]
Drugs. President Bush used the War on Drugs as an opportunity to involve himself in foreign

policy, claiming that American drug users contributed to instability and were “paying for

murder” in South American countries.15 He believed that American forces should be used to stop

cocaine production within South America, specifically Colombia. Known as Plan Colombia,

Bush had started a government initiative to financially aid law enforcement within Peru, Bolivia,

and Colombia. Plan Colombia resulted in no effect on cocaine usage within the U.S. 16 President

Clinton also partook in the Plan Colombia failure; however, he is better known for his 1994

crime bill. The bill expanded law enforcement, imposed harsher penalties for certain crimes,

including mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, and allocated funds for the hiring of

police officers and the construction of prisons. 17 Overall, Clinton’s bill fed into the cycle of mass

incarceration through prioritizing punishment over prevention and rehabilitation. While these

administrations did not create any significant changes to aggressive policing tactics, they rigidly

enforced them, solidifying the draconian style of policing that persists today.

While law enforcement tactics grew more aggressive, disproportionately targeting

African Americans, drug trafficking organizations were given an opportunity to adapt and

exploit vulnerabilities in the system. Drugs have been a popular commodity for thousands of

years. Wherever there is a demand, there is inevitably a corresponding supply, and drugs have

consistently commanded a significant demand. Compared to squeezing a balloon, this

phenomenon illustrates how pressure in one area causes expansion in another. Falling under the

concept of the Balloon Effect, any time a drug organization shuts down, it will simply move to

15
Matthew R. Pembleton, "George H.W. Bush's biggest failure? The war on drugs.," The Washington Post, last
modified December 6, 2018, accessed May 11, 2024, [Link]
hw-bushs-biggest-failure-war-drugs/.
16 Natalio Cosoy, "Has Plan Colombia really worked?," BBC, last modified February 2016, accessed May 15, 2024,

[Link]
17 Udi Ofer, "How the 1994 Crime Bill Fed the Mass Incarceration Crisis," American Civil Liberties Union, last

modified June 2019, accessed May 2, 2024, [Link]

refine their techniques in transporting and smuggling drugs. Sanho Tree, the Director of the

Institute for Policy Studies Drug Policy Project, states that past government policies have

produced “this filtering effect decade after a decade where you end up artificially selecting or

breeding super-traffickers”.19 Now methods such as drug tunnels and narco-submarines are

available to transport drugs unsuspectingly. Furthermore, not only have transportation methods

evolved, but the toxicity of drugs has also increased. In response to harsher policies, drug

producers have developed substances that are easier to manufacture, often resulting in more

potent and deadly effects on the human body.20 As no major rehabilitation efforts have been

offered by any presidential administration, addiction remains a large issue within Black

communities. With new deadlier and addictive drugs readily available, Black communities find

themselves confronting even larger challenges in combating substance abuse.

While slavery has been abolished for roughly 159 years and the government has legally

banned discrimination by race, America’s well-known legacy of marginalizing black

communities lives on through the War on Drugs. Through unsuccessful and harmful policies,

law enforcement has been bred to be aggressive, while drug trafficking organizations have

adapted, exploiting vulnerabilities in the system and perpetuating the cycle of drug-related harm

to Black communities. As the War on Drugs leaves a stain on American History, it serves as a

reminder of the consequences of handling a public health matter through criminal policy. Its

repercussions permeate all aspects of American society. As seen in the 2020 Black Lives Matter

movement, alleged drug-related crimes have been the excuse for the deaths of many innocent

18 Sanho Tree, "How the war on drugs has made drug traffickers more ruthless and efficient," interview by German
Lopez Vox, Vox, last modified January 30, 2017, accessed April 24, 2024, [Link]
politics/2017/1/30/14346766/drug-war-failure-evolution.
19 Sanho Tree, "How the war on drugs," interview, Vox.
20
Sanho Tree, "How the war on drugs," interview, Vox.
lives. The deaths of individuals like Breonna Taylor, who was killed in a faulty drug raid, and

George Floyd, whose death was exacerbated by systemic issues, are tied to aggressive policing,

highlighting the fatal consequences of these policies.21 The War on Drugs continues to

perpetuate racial injustices, calling for reform to address these deep-rooted issues.

21
Brian Mann, "After 50 Years Of The War On Drugs, 'What Good Is It Doing For Us?,'" National Public Radio,
last modified June 17, 2021, accessed May 2, 2024, [Link]
the-war-on-drugs-what-good-is-it-doing-for-us.