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Purpose Of The War On Drugs By Michelle Alexander

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In this essay, I will discuss the purpose of the War on Drugs. Note, that my knowledge and credibility will come from The New Jim Crow, written by Michelle Alexander. First, I will define exactly the reason why we created the War on Drugs. Next, we will look at the effects that War on Drugs created. Thirdly, we’ll discuss some of the excuses that law enforcement officers did and still do, to “crack down” drugs. My philosophy on the War on Drugs is controversial, in the book we understand that consumption between blacks and whites. However, the sentencing that was used was not reasonable and, or proper. I believe we should be enforcing drugs equally, and the sentencing should be reasonable. First and foremost, the purpose about the War on …show more content…

Many black men were being prosecuted and taken off the streets in violation of drug offenses. However, like we mentioned in our zoom meeting, the Whites were using “pure” cocaine in the 1980’s. Which was illegal but why didn’t they get prosecuted? As a result, it was because of their status, and their skin color. In contrast, the blacks weren’t capable of buying cocaine because of the price, instead, the black community came up with crack cocaine. According to Professor Amber Colbert, crack cocaine contains a slight amount of cocaine with various chemicals, including baking soda. Consequently, Michelle Alexander claimed a study that was published in 2000 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “NIDA reported that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students, use crack cocaine at eight times the rate of black students, and use heroin at seven times the rate of black students” (Michelle Alexander;2011, Pg. 99). In spite of the study, the War on Drugs created mass incarceration. “When the War on Drugs gained full steam in the mid-1980s, prison admissions for African Americans skyrocketed, nearly quadrupling in three years, and then increasing steadily until reached in 2000 a level more than twenty-six times the level in 1983” (Alexander;2011, Pg.

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: The New Press. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" argues that law enforcement officials routinely racially profile minorities to deny them socially, politically, and economically as was accustomed in the Jim Crow era.

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In The New Jim Crow, civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander makes the case that the system of Jim Crow never died. It just took a new form in the shape of mass incarceration. Today, African American men are labelled “criminals” and stripped of their freedom, their voting rights, and their access to government programs. Alexander’s thesis is that we are currently living in a new Jim Crow era; the systemic oppression of slavery and segregation never actually went away, Alexander argues, but merely changed form.

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The author found that more people of color, especially black males are under the control our criminal justice system than were enslaved in 1850. The author supports the pervious idea by using specific examples such as the “War on Drugs” to show people of color are targeted more by law enforcement officers and scrutinize harsher by our courts for drug laws but the drug usage is used at the same rate by blacks and whites. With the help of mass-media, the “crack” epidemic in inner cities, the War on Drugs policies, the “Get tough on crime” policies, and the propaganda about people of color all have influenced the way mainstream society thinks about blacks. The author found that mainstream society believes that black people commits more crime and uses more drugs than white people, so therefore blacks deserved to incarcerated. However, Michelle Alexander disproves in “The New Jim Crow” that blacks commit more crimes than whites, the drug usage rates are the same between both races, propaganda has influenced the way mainstream society views blacks and that the “War on Drugs” and the “Get Tough on Crime” was policies targeted towards inner cities and people of color with the intent to enslave them in the criminal justice system by giving them felonies in which people of color are disenfranchise by society.

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For example, agencies have been established with the sole intent to manage drug use and distribution and technology has been exclusively developed to detect the presence of drugs. Yet, evidence has indicated that such exhaustive efforts have been relatively unsuccessful. First, it has been assumed that drugs have perpetuated violence in society and based on this rationale, it was believed that by the suppressing the pervasiveness of drugs that incidents of violence would simultaneously diminish. However, reality has failed to align with the expectations that had initially been anticipated. Research findings have suggested that the decriminalization of drugs would result in a less adversarial drug market in which conflicts have tended to arise among dealers as well as between dealers and buyers (Common Sense for Drug Policy, 2007, p. 21).

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