“Throughout the country, major arrests and drug seizures were announced with great fanfare. Cars, planes, boats, and houses were confiscated. Arrest and incarceration statistics soared. The public perception was that we were winning the War on Drugs” (Schmoke, 2008).
This quote was said by Kurt Schmoke, the first African-American mayor in Baltimore. He describes how, as a lawyer, he believed that by prosecuting criminals who had committed crimes related to drug usage and dealing, he believed he was helping the “Drug War” crusade and helping reduce addiction. However, when he became the mayor, he realized how far from the truth he was due to the fact that his role as mayor showed him that his role as incarcerating people was not necessarily helping them end their addiction.
Incarceration as an approach to dealing with drug crime became even more popular in the late 1960s. In 1968, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs” by increasing efforts against the sale, distribution, and consumption of illicit drugs (Moore and Elkavich, 2008). By producing tougher laws and increasing prosecution rates, the war on drugs led to a skyrocketing of incarceration rates. It is frustrating to me that the higher incarceration rates were seen as a sign of success by the politicians and lawyers despite the fact that there had not been a comparable decrease in drug usage.
The fact that the drug problem did not end should have told everyone that, rather than helping to reduce drug usage and creating treatment facilities for those struggling with addiction, this “war on drugs” resulted in an increased amount of hardship in families of color and urban communities. Most often people of lower socioeconomic status and African-Americans were persecuted, as these laws were not enforced equally such as in the case of crack being stereotyped as a “black” drug and cocaine as a “rich white” drug. Many African Americans were unable to remove themselves from what the police saw as target “drug environments.” In mid-1999, approximately 800,000 African-American men were in the custody of prisons and jails, which is 4.6% of the entire population of African-American men. That same year, 68,000 African-American women were also incarcerated, which was more than the entire carceral population of any major western-European country (Wacquant 2001).
This truly displays the shocking magnitude of the escalation in the rate of incarceration of African-Americans. Although it was convenient for politicians to place all addicts in jails, regardless of the severity of their crimes, and consider it an end to the problem, this did not “win” the war on drugs. Instead, research has now conclusively shown that incarcerating people for nonviolent drug offenses did not make a major difference in their drug usage. Compounding the problem, after being released from jail, most of these addicts were thrown back into society without any further rehabilitation or social support. The few people who did get access to further treatment did not receive treatment for the social dimensions of the disease. Reintegration for felons was also made harder by the fact that they were unable to obtain employment and provide for their families once they were released from prison. This led to people and their families being evicted, and there were few subsidized units available to help them. Despite public perception at the time, I agree with Mayor Schmoke and believe that we definitely did not “win” the War on Drugs, but made it worse by punishing those who needed rehabilitation and imprisoning them.
References
Marc Mauer and Ryan King. (2007, September 01). A 25-Year Quagmire: The War On Drugs and Its Impact on American Society. Retrieved from https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/a-25-year-quagmire-the-war-on-drugs-and-its-impact-on-american-society/#:~:text=Our analysis, based on an,provide adequate treatment in prison.
Moore, L. D., & Elkavich, A. (2008, May). Who's using and who's doing time: Incarceration, the war on drugs, and public health. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2374804/#:~:text=WAR ON DRUGS,-The stories of&text=7 The outcome has increased,judicial discretion, and greater policing.
Schmoke, L. K. (2008, April 14). Drug Sanity. Retrieved from http://newheadnews.com/KrtLSchmkNWRPBLCpr148.html
WACQUANT, L. (2001). Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh. Punishment & Society, 3(1), 95–133. https://doi.org/10.1177/14624740122228276
Akram, M. F. (2001). Prevalence of Comorbid Mental Illness and Drug Use Recorded in General Practice: Preliminary findings from the General Practice Research Database. Drugs: Education, Prevention, and Policy, 8(3), 275-280.
Corrigan, Patrick W, Kuwabara, Sachiko A, & O'Shaughnessy, John. (2009). The Public Stigma of Mental Illness and Drug Addiction. Journal of Social Work, 9(2), 139-147.
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