Ronald Reagan War On Drugs

When Ronald Reagan and George Bush first declared a War on Drugs in America, they opened a bunch of chaos, crime, social injustice, and a lot of heartache in the black community. The Drug War policies and laws that was implemented, violates human rights, and force police officers to aggressively pursue nonviolent criminals. This system was perfectly designed to gain social control rather than relieve neighborhoods from drugs, which have a lot of citizens questioning was this a major success or failure. Since the war on drugs have been declared, Americans have experienced nothing but an elevated level of mass incarceration, while drugs and violence have reached an all-time high in our communities. The prisons in America are leading the world

Ronald Reagan declared war on drugs in 1982, he strategically released media propaganda that gained the public support to fight this new war on drugs. He used a lot of battle words and war cries in his speeches, which led to some over aggressively policies towards a certain group of people, by this I mean if you declare a war, you must have an enemy and America always says black communities are responsible for America crimes. The enemy in this case is every black community in the United States, which also raise a question as why haven’t black communities paid attention to this ongoing war in their own backyard? Raegan campaign came up with two strategy plans in defeating this war, the first was demand reduction, which supports drug treatment programs to decrease the number of illegal drugs consumed on the streets and boost public education to decrease the poverty in America. The second plan was supply reduction, which Reagan and his team preferred because this strategy goes right along with their agenda and fits the “war” theme. This strategy is based off prohibition, criminal prosecutions, and seizing, this allows the government to legally take citizens’ rights, valuables, and properties by force using violence. Perceiving the “Drug War” as a war allowed the government to heavily search and destroy drugs and drug operations using military gear and tactics that’s made for a battlefield. President Clinton and George Bush both agreed with this policy and increased Ronald Reagans administration 's anti-drug policies, that led to heavy policing in black communities, more arrest and longer sentencing. Even though the media portrayed the drug war as a great method for crime prevention and for public safety. African American citizens has not been treated fairly in the criminal justice system and their human rights has been immorally violated,