The War on Drugs: History, Policy, and Therapeutics – Dominican University

The War on Drugs is an effort in theUnited Statessince the 1970s to combat illegaldrug useby greatly increasing penalties, enforcement, and incarceration for drug offenders.

The War on Drugs began in June 1971 when U.S. Pres.Richard Nixondeclareddrug abuseto be public enemy number one and increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and drug-treatment efforts. In 1973 theDrug Enforcement Administrationwas created out of the merger of the Office for Drug Abuse Law Enforcement, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and the Office of Narcotics Intelligence to consolidate federal efforts to control drug abuse.

The War on Drugs was a relatively small component of federal law-enforcement efforts until the presidency ofRonald Reagan, which began in 1981. Reagan greatly expanded the reach of the drug war and his focus on criminal punishment over treatment led to a massive increase in incarcerations for nonviolent drug offenses, from 50,000 in 1980 to 400,000 in 1997. In 1984 his wife,Nancy, spearheaded another facet of the War on Drugs with her Just Say No campaign, which was a privately funded effort to educate schoolchildren on the dangers of drug use. The expansion of the War on Drugs was in many ways driven by increased media coverage ofand resulting public nervousness overthecrack epidemicthat arose in the early 1980s. This heightened concern over illicit drug use helped drive political support for Reagans hard-line stance on drugs. TheU.S. Congresspassed theAnti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, whichallocated$1.7 billion to the War on Drugs and established a series of mandatory minimum prison sentences for various drug offenses. A notable feature of mandatory minimums was the massive gap between the amounts of crack and of powdercocaine that resulted in the same minimum sentence: possession of five grams of crack led to an automatic five-year sentence while it took the possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine to trigger that sentence. Since approximately 80% of crack users wereAfrican American, mandatory minimums led to an unequal increase of incarceration rates for nonviolent Black drug offenders, as well as claims that the War on Drugs was a racist institution.

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2020).War on Drugs.Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/war-on-drugs

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The War on Drugs: History, Policy, and Therapeutics - Dominican University