Alton Lucas sits on the porch of his home outside of Raleigh, N.C., on Friday, June 18, 2021. As a teenager, Alton Lucas believed basketball or music would pluck him out of North Carolina and take him around the world. In the late 1980s, he was already the right-hand man to his musically inclined best friend, Youtha Anthony Fowler, who many hip hop and R&B heads know today as DJ Nabs.
Yet the loser is clear: Black and Latino Americans, their families and their communities. A key weapon of the war was the imposition of mandatory minimums in prison sentencing. Decades later those harsh penalties at the federal level and the accompanying changes at the state level led to an increase in the prison industrial complex that saw millions of people, primarily of color, locked up and shut out of the American dream.
“We realized then that, along with dismantling organizations, there was also a real need to clean up communities, to go to where the crime was and help people that are helpless,” he said. Experts say Nixon’s successors, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, leveraged drug war policies in the following decades to their own political advantage, cementing the drug war’s legacy. The explosion of the U.S. incarceration rate, the expansion of public and private prison systems and the militarization of local police forces are all outgrowths of the drug war.
“If you’re a Black leader 30 years ago, you’re grabbing for the first in front of you,” said Fredrique, who is Black. “A lot of folks in our community said, ‘OK, get these drug dealers out of our communities, get this crack out of our neighborhood. But also give us treatment so we can help folks.’”Use of crack rose sharply in 1985, and peaked in 1989, before quickly declining in the early 1990s, according to a Harvard study.
Another major player in creating hysteria around drug use during the crack: the media. On June 17, 1986, 15 years to the day after Nixon declared the drug war, NBA draftee Len Bias died of a cocaine-induced heart attack on the University of Maryland campus. “One of the things that I thought would help me, that I thought would be my rehab, was when Len Bias died,” Lucas said. “I thought, if they showed me evidence died from an overdose of smoking crack cocaine, as much as I loved Len Bias, that I would give it up.”He was first introduced to crack cocaine in 1986, but kept his drug use largely hidden from his friends and family.
No fucking shit who do you think they were targeting?
Nothing is 'questionable' about it. It was/is a war meant to lock up minorities and it has been massively successful. The only people who should be/have been locked up over it are: Nixon Ford Carter Reagan Bush Clinton Bush Obama Trump Biden.
Cartels won, prisons won, the government won. Everyone else lost and paid for it too.
No one wins a war.The collateral damage is always the oppressed. Never the privileged and entitled. What a crazy idea!!!!!
If it's so questionable, who are the people you think may have won?
Pretty sure the CIA, FBI, industrial prison system and drug cartels won.
Drugs won the war on drugs lol
That was the intent.
Blacks were jailed and the maturity if the demand happened with mainstream secret users.
Sadly so true.
And like all good American manufactured Pharma bedtime stories go -- The Sacklers got to get away with all the billions$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ & ZERO jail. And got lawyers to game the system to not admit ANY fault. *Side note - they are white -- shocking I know...*
Somehow, both drugs and prisons won
It’s the new Jim Crow, and it was designed this way.
“Fifty years ago this summer, President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs.” The impact of this policy has dismantled, to this day, so many Black & Brown communities.
JRubinBlogger We, the UNITED STATES have a propensity to declare 'war' when we gave NO answer to a problem. Beating our chests & throwing money indiscriminately not the answers! Dont even get me started on wars, military actions & incursions.
People getting 20 years for a joint is a travesty. Heartbreaking.
Or don’t do drugs
The problem is the word war. War on drugs, racism, violence, etc. implies a total win is possible. That will never happen unless no drugs or weapons exist & people are armless & cannot speak. Tougher on crime would have been better. It implies an effort that can be continuous.
50 years later , Black Folks are locked up, jacked up , families shattered while fat cats and corporations continue to wad their pockets and bank accounts with green. Sad.
Nixon was getting suitcases full of money from drug dealers before he came up with this 'War on drugs' scheme. It was a way to fight against 'anti-war hippies' and African-Americans fighting for equality..
Nixon admitted that was the whole point of the war on drugs to begin with
Cheshire Police in England have won the War on Drugs ✌️
Drugs won the war
america won.. They have free slavery in u.s. prisons.
Will ap talk about how Biden passed prison bills on drug possession laws that affected poor people & minorities while his son smokes crack & has only been rewarded with a pampered life because joe Biden sells out working class Americans with shady & corrupt back room deals
As long as it affects African-Americans the war will never be won
The war on drugs was lost before it ever started.
Jan 1964 the war on poverty started. It has not moved the needle one inch.
Capitalism won the war on poverty
Blacks are more likely to be imprisoned over drug crimes than whites despite both using drugs at about the same rates. Just look at sentencing guidelines for crack vs cocaine and now with opioids
Time to declare victory and withdraw all troops from North America.
End it now its still happening
Is questionable whether anybody won the war on drugs Are you delusional it was a complete fucking disaster the only bigger disaster was of Vietnam
50 years later, the CIA is the largest and most violent drug cartel in the world, using its illicit drug cartel money to fund its off the books black ops.
Learn to say 'No' You have to learn to love yourself before you understand that drugs are not worth destroying your life.
Crackheads will still be crackheads!!! It’s the persons problem no one else’s!!!
The war on drugs has been lost by those who waged it. It's been certified by various govs, police organizations and even by the UN.
It's not questionable. It's been a total joke.
The us government traffics drugs making huge profits for the elite in power..you really think the great world police couldn't stop drugs coming in if it wanted to?
The difference between the way we treated crack users and the way we treat Meth/Heroin users is night and day. Crack addicts got massive prisons and expansion of the state and Heroin users get safe injection sites.
Calling people 'blacks' is an insult.
No. No, it’s not questionable. The “war on drugs” has been an outright failure.
This was always the explicit goal: to target black communities and the anti-war movement.
Drugs should be free to obtain, just like medicines. The war on crime will be over on this battlefield then.
Y'all forgot how to say African American?
Blacks did Not win the suit cases against the pharmaceutical companies instead they were arrested
When it starts at the top
I assume for way too many Americans the above means: That war was successful, it was only wrongly labelled and not successful enough. /s
respectfully, painting the colored man/black man as the villian for +1000 yrs. all drugs that make its way onto the streets come from people in power. Pharmaceutical companies are in the business of selling prescriptions NOT curing the sick. Same with illegal drugs, its business
Black Americans are not the only ones it’s all political how about war on prison reforms which unfortunately unsettling people could have been aware of facts about drugs abuse taking drugs is a choice pouring people with non violent crimes is stupidity
gladstein End the 'War on Drugs', and kill the cartels.
Always somebody else’s fault
Everybody make choices that good or bad when you make your choice you have to live with it there’s no one to blame if you want to live a life of drugs but yourself
It wasn’t a war on drugs,just an excuse for controlling people and funnel money to friend ind the corporate world. Just like any other wat,it’s all about the money.
gladstein the 'war on drugs' was just back door business deals and creating scape goats to divert racism. the art of war + the art of deception; babylonian style for 1000s of years
Duh CRIME IS , a , SUPER POWER !
The statistics are damning because it was a 'war' targeting the 'at risk' victims, the small guy and not the mega-sized financiers, producers, importers & their border protects. Targeting the user and not the producer is obviously a an evil joke, at best
Dude. Drugs won the drug war.
What war? The CIA has been busted a few times importing drugs into USA. Look up 'CIA and Contra cocaine trafficking'. The only way we can stop this 'war' is not have a war. Take the money spent on jail after the fact and spend on addiction help to help to never become addicted.
Drug dealers poison and ( often) kill your kids.
Have you seen the 13th? Excellent movie on Netflix.
So you are saying American organisation are kidnapping children and giving them drugs
That’s because the war was never actually on drugs, the war was on black people.
AND UNCLE JO JO. . .HAS LET 1 MILLION ILLEGALS INTO OUR COUNTRY IN 6 MONTHS. . .LOADED WITH COVID, FENTYNOL, COKE, HASH, CRACK. . .TO KILL AMERICANS. . .BY THE 1,000'S THANKS JO JO !!! YOUR THE BEST !!!!!
That was the whole point, wasn’t it?
100,000 OD deaths this year, most are white, but go ahead AP, pretend black victimization or something CRT.
well. the generations of kids that grew up not drug addicts. course mob bought legitimate drug companies. so most of them died withdrawing anyway. cheers
The so called 'War against the Coronavirus' will end with the same result.
America just keeps piling on that reparations bill RacistShithole
Well from an ex drug user... 'I knew the risks but the high made me not care.'
oh, someone won it alright. Drugs. drugs won the war on drugs.drugs will always win the war on drugs.
three biggest recipients of private prison money are some familiar names: Senator Cory Gardner (R), Senator Mitch McConnell (R) and Trump. it’s easy to see why private prisons are spending heavily to elect Republicans this November: The future of their business depends on it.
Every drug user no matter what colour or creed there families and communities are the real losers not just the black community
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