Nixon Administration's Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention And Control Act Of 1970

By the late 1960s, the issue of unchecked drug use had entered the forefront of the American consciousness. Major periodicals regularly published drug-related articles, drug policy gained prominence on the federal government’s agenda, and citizens across the United States watched in trepidation as drug use entered the cultural mainstream. This perceived drug crisis precipitated the Nixon Administration’s Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 (CDAPCA), which reorganized and consolidated pre-existing drug legislation into a single law. While the act was passed in response to general anxieties about drug use, it asymmetrically affected different populations based on social class. Through analysis of primary and secondary

As Himmelstein writes, for any particular drug, “the lower the social position of the users, the more likely that use will be regarded as deviant, disreputable, and wrong. As the social location of use changes, so does its moral status” (Himmelstein 16). As the ‘social location’ of many illicit drugs—such as marijuana, LSD, and other substances popular within ‘60s counterculture—rose, the pre-existing “conception of the drug problem became problematic” (Peterson Hagan 67). In other words, drug use could no longer be viewed as a degenerate, ‘poor’ phenomenon, far removed from mainstream white society. By the 1960s, at least for affluent whites, drug use came to be “regarded as an unfortunate malady, but not as inherently morally depraved or stigmatizing” (Himmelstein 17). This softened stance on drug abuse conflicted with existing legislation, which enforced harsh mandatory sentences for first-time offenders. By the late 1960s, a new approach to drug prohibition was needed—one that would continue to signal government disapproval of drug abuse while also protecting the new, affluent demographics that were now using recreational

With the passage of the act in 1970, “Congress eliminated almost all mandatory penalties” for drug possession, instead granting judges increased discretion in sentencing (259 Peterson). These included the penalty that had condemned LaVarre to prison. Purportedly, the policies were loosened in the interest of “achieving greater law enforcement, more equitable justice in courts, and preserving traditional American values of fitting the punishment to the crime and the criminal” (259). This egalitarian language is indicative of the official rhetoric surrounding the bill, which decried disproportionate sentences dealt to convicts like LaVarre. But the true impact of removing mandatory penalties was less equitable. In reality, the softened penalties worked to “minimize any possible negative consequences that might accrue from the criminal drug activities of a preferred segment of the population—white middle class youth” (252). Even though these white youth regularly engaged in illicit drug trafficking and abuse, their cases were often dismissed due to the additional judicial discretion granted by the CDAPCA. These privileges certainly were not granted to poor ‘pushers’ who belonged to minority groups. Ultimately, although the formal language of the CDAPCA was non-preferential, its outcomes were decidedly