Volumes have (already) been written about Jeff Sessions’ efforts to plunge America right back down the “war on drugs” rabbit hole, a Quixote-esque pursuit that everyone with any sense knows will invariably dead end in failure.
This is a long, and winding debate that we’ve had in these pages on any number of occasions, but for our purposes here, suffice to say that when it comes to policies that are ostensibly designed to get “tough” on drugs, racial biases are always – always – lurking in the background.
Of course Sessions’ “hard” line on mandatory minimums fits neatly with how Donald Trump likes to characterize modern America.
Recall his apocalyptic inauguration speech or simply note what the recently-released transcripts of his January 27 call with Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto revealed about how he sees New Hampshire. To wit, from your President:
I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den.
Well, as you think about all of this, do note the following two charts, the first of which shows that although weed smoking is equally prevalent among whites and African Americans, the latter are 3 and a half times more likely to get arrested for marijuana possession:
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Oh, and by the way, remember that although white people have good weed conversation, passing out around them can have decidedly undesirable consequences…
Sessions is merely taking a page from Attorney General John Ashcroft’s playbook upon his taking office in 2001, under Bush Junior. This ACLU 2001 report makes clear what the game plan is that Sessions is adopting now as it is the same as Ashcroft played then – https://www.aclu.org/other/drug-war-new-jim-crow
As strategy having it original roots in the minds of Nixon and his gang. Witness this excerpt from John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s chief domestic advisor when the president announced the “war on drugs” in 1971, who admitted this about Nixon’s drug war:
“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nixon-drug-war-racist_us_56f16a0ae4b03a640a6bbda1
And that’s the difference between Republicans and Democrats.
Sit back and reflect upon the comparison of the scandals involving Republicans and Democrats over the last 75 years, and ask yourself which party gets the blame for *** intentionally*** inflicting serious and sometimes deadly harm upon ***Americans Citizenry.***
also a handy voter suppression tool
“Chasing the Scream” is an eye-opening history of the war on drugs that was started 70 years before Nixon.
Everybody gets their own drug..that’s the way it is. White potheads have a cultural leg up on weed because most of their parents have been comfortable making it their one comfortable flaw. Apparently Black people have not yet arrived because the police don’t share that quaint view. White 20 somethings also get Meth and most cocaine..to say nothing of the almost total hammerlock they have on the beer swilling trade. Black people dominate the crack variety of cocaine and heroin..the use of which gets them long stretches of bunk time in a convenient prison. Outside of beer and foo foo wine consumption the hard liquor prize goes to a white sub-group/..the Irish. They’ve had that one for at least 150 years. Is there anyone not yet offended? That’s the way it is.