The War On Drugs In America Summary

The War on Drugs in America The war on drugs (also referred to as the drug war) is a term that describes the efforts aimed at combatting drugs inside and outside the United States. These efforts include enforcement of the prohibition of drugs and combatting the manufacture, the transport and the trade of drugs worldwide. The war on drugs finds its roots several decades ago, during the presidency of Richard Nixon (1971). Nixon had declared that the use and the trade of drugs were “public enemy number one”. Today, the drug war is synonym of massive governmental efforts and spending aimed at eliminating drugs from the American society. Several US government agencies and departments were involved in this effort. These included the department

The author argues that the war on drugs is nothing more than a series of laws aimed at maintaining the now-abolished segregation laws (Alexander, 25). The author insists on the facts that the war on drugs disproportionally targets African Americans compared to White Americans (Alexander, 28). The author makes her point by explaining the widely disproportionate number of African Americans that are incarcerated for drug-related offences compared to similar offences committed by white people (Alexander, 76). The strong idea presented in this book is that of a racial war that is disguised in a war on drugs (Alexander, 86). Since the definition of suspicion does not require a factual probable cause, police officers can search individuals simply because “they subjectively think the individual might be in possession of drugs”. Since people of color inherently trigger suspicions, they are the target of excessive, abusive, questioning, searches, and even arrests. The author argues that police officers find people suspicious simply because of the color of their skin. This point is corroborated by the statistics of the justice department itself. An astonishing 90% of people convicted of drug felonies are African Americans