Daily Archives: August 29, 2022

The United States War on Drugs was a famous campaign that kicked against drug use and sales by prescribing heavy sentences. However, in retrospect, there is a lot of evidence that points to how this campaign may not have only been poorly executed but may have served as a means to target specific populations in the country.

To this day, the impact of the War on Drugs policies is still felt by those it chose to search out. This article will discuss the Controlled Substances Act, its motivations, and its influence on specific American communities and search to answer whether the War on Drugs failed.

It was in the 70s, during the Nixon administration, that this campaign was officially brought to life. Nixon referred to drug abuse as being public enemy number one of the American people, aiming to eliminate that vice. During this era, significant moves have changed the approach to drug policy in the United States up to date.

On June 18, 1971, Nixon officially mentioned the term, which stuck with his campaign and beyond until now. Based on this, he asked Congress to allocate more of the countrys resources towards the prevention of new addicts and the rehabilitation of those who are addicted. It explains the many major drug-related milestones during his administration, including the founding of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the signing of the Controlled Substances Act.

Several substances were banned. While it only seems like Nixon War on Drugs could only yield benefits, there is a lot of damage and concerns from the programs motivation and how it appears to search out minority demographics like African Americans, Asians, Native Americans, and Hispanics.

However, it did provide a solid means to search and classify pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs and cut off the easy access that many patients may expect to have.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) into law. It aimed to consolidate all previous policies (which numbered in the hundreds) that concerned illegal substances and controlled substances into a single policy. It is mandated that state laws must comply with the Controlled Substances Act, but they may be narrower or more strict than federal law. They may not undermine or contradict federal law.

Substances are categorized into five schedules. This makes it relatively simple to add a new drug to the schedule or change the classification without enacting new legislation. It also makes it easier for state legislatures to develop sentencing guidelines for the five categories rather than for each individual drug. However, the War on Drugs race impact is also evident.

Criteria for placing a drug include how addictive the substance is and if it has any medical or health benefits. Schedule 1 contains the most addictive drugs and carries the most severe penalties, while Schedule 5 substances are not very likely to be addictive and carry much milder punishments.

Before Nixon War on Drugs laws became public, there were laws around the legality of Marijuana. However, these laws mainly were state-level regulations around Marijuana and not nationally implemented. Despite these rights, many still smoked.

It wasnt until 1937, when the Marihuana Tax Act was implemented, that Marijuana became illegal on a federal level. However, this policy excluded medical and industrial uses for the plant, with a tax placed on any sales. This act was eventually deemed unconstitutional decades later.

Besides those prescribed cannabis by physicians for health reasons, it was a drug whose use was primarily associated with hippies and black people. When the Controlled Substances Act was introduced in 1970, the drug became illegal on a federal level, with no exceptions.

It was made illegal and classified along with Schedule I substances substances with a high potential to be abused and no proven medical use or health benefit. However, this law moved marijuana possession from a felony to a misdemeanor.

In our modern time, Marijuana is still federally illegal in the United States. However, several state laws go a different route. Medical use for health problems is legal in 36 states, and recreational use in 18. Therefore, you can use Marijuana in these states and be well within your rights.

Crack cocaine only found its way into the United States during Ronald Reagans administration. It means that there were no laws regarding this drug before this time. This drug was introduced into black communities and took root, leading to an increase in crime rates between 1981 and 1986. The proliferation of crack made it clear that the War on Drugs failed the last time.

One can think that the anti-drug policies found a time to revive here, as new federal drug laws were enforced and funding for anti-drug programs was increased, with other policies in play too. For example, possessing 5 grams of crack attracted a five-year minimum prison sentence without parole. However, powdered cocaine, used predominantly in white communities, would require 500 grams for the same penalty. This disparity pointed to the presence of War on Drugs racism.

Regarding trafficking for crack cocaine in 2020, the War on Drugs black people made up 77.1% of offenders, 15.9% were Hispanic, and 6.3% were white.

Decades of unbalanced drug-related War on Drugs black people incarcerations have set a notion among the less-enlightened population that African American criminals are involved in drug dealing, trafficking, and use more than any other category. It promotes prejudice that provides a disadvantage to many black people in daily life, though justice may be difficult to get.

Its hard to deem these measures a success. The rates of drug overdose deaths over the roughly five decades since its enforcement have continued to climb, nearly quadrupling from 1999 up to 2017, and thats not including other health issues. It can easily be said the War on Drugs failed as this was certainly not the expectation of such an anti-drug policy. Approximately 20% of all Americans over the age of 12 admitted to using illicit substances in the past year.

In 2010, President Barack Obama reworked the sentencing disparity seen for criminal offenses involving crack cocaine and powder cocaine. It is now no longer a 100:1 ratio, but instead an 18:1 ratio required for the same duration of jail time. It helps resolve a bit of the issue with War on Drugs racism.

Starting in the early 2000s, there was a push for the decriminalization of Marijuana. Nebraska decriminalized the drug in 1978, but it was only until 2001 that Nevada followed. There are now 18 states that have legalized it for recreational use. To many, this is justice. To others, justice is waiting for a federal outcome.

Cultivation and distribution are entirely legal in the states, and those less than 21 years old cannot use it.

Through the years, many have called for cannabis to be dropped down a schedule or be removed entirely from the schedule, as it doesnt fit the criteria for other substances in there, such as heroin and opioids.

The consequences of this War on Drugs racism are not entirely gone, as black people find themselves typecast as the criminal in a story. Unfortunately, white people dont help this narrative. It causes issues with education, employment, finances, and many more interactions in public.

War on Drugs racism will always be a significant issue with the campaign. It has done nothing to improve drug use statistics in the country significantly, and it is still a public enemy. Nixon War on Drugs has caused a lot of consequences in African American communities thanks to the enforcement of these policies. It is hoped that the incarceration rates and drug use statistics will be analyzed appropriately to build policy to solve this issue.

It was a campaign started over five decades ago that aimed to tackle the issue of drug abuse in communities in the United States. At its heart was the Controlled Substances Act, which notably resulted in the scheduling of many substances. The Drug Enforcement Agency was founded too.

Richard Nixon started it during his presidency. He stated that drug abuse was public enemy number one, which served as the primary fuel for his drive to eliminate the problem of these illicit substances. With the War on Drugs, race was supposedly a target during its inception, as they searched out minorities to pin at an indiscriminate level.

It started back in 1970, with the signing of the Controlled Substances Act. However, the official declaration from Nixon regarding this war was in 1971, and that was where his campaign against drug abuse was able to get its name.

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Published on: January 6th, 2022

Updated on: January 6th, 2022

Isaak Stotts is an in-house medical writer in AddictionResource. Isaak learned addiction psychology at Aspen University and got a Master's Degree in Arts in Psychology and Addiction Counseling. After graduation, he became a substance abuse counselor, providing individual, group, and family counseling for those who strive to achieve and maintain sobriety and recovery goals.

8 years of nursing experience in wide variety of behavioral and addition settings that include adult inpatient and outpatient mental health services with substance use disorders, and geriatric long-term care and hospice care. He has a particular interest in psychopharmacology, nutritional psychiatry, and alternative treatment options involving particular vitamins, dietary supplements, and administering auricular acupuncture.

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The War on Drugs: Racism and the Consequences of the War

The global war on drugs is a failure and should be replaced by decriminalization strategies grounded in science, health, security and human rights, according to a recent report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use, says the report.

In the 40 years since President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs, the Commission says repressive strategies focused on criminalization have not worked.Arresting and incarcerating tens of millions of these people in recent decades has filled prisons and destroyed lives and families without reducing the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organizations, the report concludes.

As an alternative, the Commission which includes activists, business leaders, former American cabinet officials, and former European and Latin American presidents points to a number of countries that have decriminalized drugs without seeing a significant rise in use or drug related-violence. Portugal saw declines in heroin use, new HIV infections, and the incarceration rate once it coupled the decriminalization of all drugs with treatment policies. Similar drops in problematic drug use, especially heroin, were observed in both Switzerland and the Netherlands after adopting polices that emphasized treatment rather than criminalization.

While the report says certain law enforcement strategies can help manage and shape illicit drug markets, poorly designed ones, on the other hand, can matters worse. The Commission cited a recent study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy that found aggressive law enforcement interventions in drug markets can markedly increase levels of violence. Heavily investing in a criminalization approach can inadvertently lead to an arms race between law enforcement and violent trafficking organizations, make those markets more ruthless, and increase the homicide rates. Arresting and punishing drug users tend to have a marginal and short-lived impact on drug prices and availability and create market opportunities for replaceable low-level dealers.

The criminalization of drug use in the U.S. has led to tragic consequences and mass incarceration, with a disproportionate impact on lower-income and minority communities.

Despite the fact that Whites, African Americans, and Latinos all use illicit drugs at similar rates, 45 percent of all convicted drug offenders in state prison are black compared to 28 percent that are white and 20 percent that are Hispanic, according to the Sentencing Project. State prisons account for about 85 percent of all prisoners in the U.S. Since 1980, the number of people incarcerated in prison or jail in the U.S. for drug crimes has gone from 40,000 to 500,000, representing an increase of 1100 percent. Much of that explosion in the incarceration of drug offenders is due to aggressive law enforcement interventions and stiff mandatory sentencing provisions mainly targeting low-level dealers and users adopted at both state and federal level.

Criminal justice and civil rights advocates have been particularly critical of the negative consequences of the drug war. Felony convictions, even those stemming from a drug offense, can restrict job prospects, housing assistance, financial aid for higher education, voting rights and erode other hard won civil rights gains of the last century.

But some progress has been made in making the drug war less punitive. Earlier this year, President Obama said he was willing consider alternatives to arrests, incarceration, interdiction and focus on we shrink demand. Last summer, the president signed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which narrowed the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. Attorney General Eric Holder also recently endorsed retroactive sentencing reductions for some crack offenders.

By the same token, however, the Obama administration vigorously opposed a measure to legalize marijuana in California this fall. Gil Kerlikowske, the nations drug czar, also made it clear in a recent op-ed that the Obama administration did not support decriminalizing drugs since, by his lights, decriminalization would to an increase drug use and the need for drug treatment, while also making it more difficult to keep our communities healthy and safe.

That kind of thinking will likely only mitigate some of the effects but not end a $2.5 trillion drug war that continues to destroy the lives of millions of people every day.

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The War on Drugs Has Failed, Commission Says

Today, police make more than 1.5 million drug arrests each year, and about 550,000 of those are for cannabis offenses alone. Almost 500,000 people are incarcerated for nothing more than a drug law violation, and Black and brown people are disproportionately impacted by drug enforcement and sentencing practices. Rates of drug use and sales are similar across racial and ethnic lines, but Black and Latinx people are far more likely than white people to be stopped, searched, arrested, convicted, harshly sentenced, and saddled with a lifelong criminal record.

The wide-ranging consequences of a drug law violation arent limited to senseless incarceration: people with low incomes are denied food stamps and public assistance for past drug convictions; states including Texas and Florida suspend drivers licenses for drug offenses totally unrelated to driving; and numerous other policies deny child custody, voting rights, employment, loans, and financial aid to people with criminal records.

But its clear that most U.S. voters are ready to abandon this approach.

A new poll by the American Civil Liberties Union shows that 65 percent of voters support ending the war on drugs. They recognize that current drug policies have led to the incarceration of millions while doing nothing to make the country safer or healthier. Furthermore, 66 percent support eliminating all criminal penalties for drug possession and investing the resources saved in treatment and addiction services.

While the war on drugs was officially inaugurated by Nixon in June 1971, the United States has used drug laws to selectively target specific communities for more than a century. In the 1870s, anti-opium laws were aimed at Chinese immigrants. In the 1910s and 1920s, anti-cannabis laws introduced in the Midwest and Southwest targeted Mexican Americans and migrants. As John Ehrlichman, a top Nixon aide, revealed in a 1994 interview that was published in 2016, the war on drugs itself was designed to target Black people and hippies:

Their plan set the country on the misguided, punitive, and counterproductive path it pursues today, as administrations since have carried it forward. Incarceration rates skyrocketed during Ronald Reagans presidency, surging from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997, and Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump made their own damaging contributions to escalating the drug war.

But there are some wins worth mentioning. A growing number of states are decriminalizing cannabisand, so far, 17 have legalized itwhile earlier this year, New York passed the most progressive cannabis legalization legislation in the country. Notably, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize all drugsa measure passed last November and effective since February. Known as Measure 110, it ends the enforcement of drug laws and shifts resources to drug treatment, housing, and harm reduction services, without raising taxes. And this week, Democratic lawmakers introduced the Drug Policy Reform Act, which would decriminalize all drugs, expunge existing records and allow for resentencing, and invest in health-centered measures to take on drug addiction.

The United States has been embroiled in a drug war that has yielded much misery, especially for Black and brown people who have been disproportionately targeted, and trillions in wasted tax dollars. It hasnt made us safer, but it has devastated communities. We are finally beginning to acknowledge that drug use is a public health issue, not a criminal problem. To address it, we must invest in support servicessuch as peer support and recovery programsfor those who need or want them, and end this decades-long war.

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Fifty Years Ago Today, President Nixon Declared the War on Drugs

Last week, the internet exploded with a fairly shocking allegation: President Richard Nixon began America's war on drugs to criminalize black people and hippies, according to a newly revealed 1994 quote from Nixon domestic policy adviser John Ehrlichman.

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," Ehrlichman told journalist Dan Baum in 1994. "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, 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."

The accusation was shocking, characterizing the war on drugs as a racist, politically motivated crusade.

But Ehrlichman's claim is likely an oversimplification, according to historians who have studied the period and Nixon's drug policies in particular. There's no doubt Nixon was racist, and historians told me that race could have played one role in Nixon's drug war. But there are also signs that Nixon wasn't solely motivated by politics or race: For one, he personally despised drugs to the point that it's not surprising he would want to rid the world of them. And there's evidence that Ehrlichman felt bitter and betrayed by Nixon after he spent time in prison over the Watergate scandal, so he may have lied.

More importantly, Nixon's drug policies did not focus on the kind of criminalization that Ehrlichman described. Instead, Nixon's drug war was largely a public health crusade one that would be reshaped into the modern, punitive drug war we know today by later administrations, particularly President Ronald Reagan.

None of that means that the drug war hasn't disproportionately hurt black Americans. It clearly has. But the lessons of Nixon's drug policies may not be so much that he was a racist, power-hungry politician although, again, he was but rather that even well-meaning policies can have big, terrible unintended consequences.

Let's start with what Nixon actually sought to do when he launched his war on drugs. The speech that started the formal war on drugs in 1971 did not focus solely on criminalization. Instead, Nixon dedicated much of his time to talking up initiatives that would increase prevention and treatment for drug abuse.

"Enforcement must be coupled with a rational approach to the reclamation of the drug user himself," Nixon told Congress in 1971. "We must rehabilitate the drug user if we are to eliminate drug abuse and all the antisocial activities that flow from drug abuse."

The numbers back this up. According to the federal government's budget numbers for anti-drug programs, the "demand" side of the war on drugs (treatment, education, and prevention) consistently got more funding during Nixon's time in office (1969 to 1974) than the "supply" side (law enforcement and interdiction).

Historically, this is a commitment for treating drugs as a public health issue that the federal government has not replicated since the 1970s. (Although President Barack Obama's budget proposal would, for the first time in decades, put a majority of anti-drug spending on the demand side once again.)

Drug policy historians say this was intentional. Nixon poured money into public health initiatives, such as medication-assisted treatments like methadone clinics, education campaigns that sought to prevent teens from trying drugs, and more research on drug abuse. In fact, the Controlled Substances Act the basis for so much of modern drug policy actually reduced penalties on marijuana possession in 1970, when Nixon was in office.

"Nixon was really worried about kids and drugs," David Courtwright, a drug policy historian at the University of North Florida, told me. "He saw illicit drug use by young people as a form of social rot, and it's something that weakens America."

Indeed, the person tapped to become the nation's first drug czar and oversee federal drug policies was Jerome Jaffe, a doctor who at the time was working on improving drug addiction treatments in Chicago. Jaffe embraced the position, worrying that it was only a matter of time until the war on drugs became more punitive.

Nixon "saw illicit drug use by young people as a form of social rot, and it's something that weakens America"

"There was an urgency to get as much done as we could," Jaffe told me. "The thrust of American history from the 1920s on was on law enforcement. And I thought, in a sense, Nixon's emphasis on treatment expansion was kind of an aberration."

(As Jaffe suggested, even though Nixon is credited with starting the modern war on drugs, the drug war had been fought for decades before that since at least 1914 although more through taxes and regulations than explicit prohibition.)

To some extent, Nixon's hand was forced: One of his big concerns at the time was heroin addiction among Vietnam War soldiers, of whom 15 to 20 percent had drug problems. "A big driver of this in the early 1970s was crime and drug use among soldiers," Courtwright said. "They were really the catalysts. The attitude toward these people was different, socially: They were sent to a place where there were a lot of drugs in very stressful conditions, so shouldn't we try to treat that problem?"

Nixon would, however, shift to a greater focus on the law enforcement side of the war on drugs over time. Why that shift happened may help explain Ehrlichman's quote.

Over time, Nixon did shift more toward the law enforcement side of the war on drugs, particularly when it became politically convenient. But Nixon's personal motives aside, it's entirely plausible that he was tapping into a broader movement instead of creating his own just to criminalize constituents and people of certain races whom he disliked.

In 1972, for instance, Nixon's reelection bid sought to capture longstanding concerns about black crime and drug use among white Southerners in what's now called the "Southern strategy." To do this, Nixon shifted to the right on drugs with a tough-on-crime platform.

That year, for example, Nixon announced the creation of the Office for Drug Abuse Law Enforcement, a precursor to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The office's goal, as Nixon explained, was to put greater emphasis on fighting drugs through the criminal justice system. "Today our balanced, comprehensive attack on drug abuse moves forward in yet another critical area as we institute a major new program to drive drug traffickers and drug pushers off the streets of America," Nixon said in 1972.

"These are very harsh measures. But circumstances warrant such provisions"

But it didn't stop with the 1972 campaign. As the allegations in the Watergate scandal grew in 1973, Nixon once again put emphasis on the law enforcement side.

In January 1973, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller proposed harsher prison sentences, including mandatory minimums, for drug trafficking. At the time, Nixon quipped to his staff, "Rocky can ride this thing for all it's worth" suggesting he knew the political value in Rockefeller's move.

Nixon followed Rockefeller's plan with his own proposal: In March 1973, he outlined a plan to step up prison sentences, including mandatory minimums, for drugs. Nixon was very clear in his intent: "These are very harsh measures, to be applied within very rigid guidelines and providing only a minimum of sentencing discretion to judges. But circumstances warrant such provisions." The plan, however, was swallowed in the chaos of the Watergate scandal.

From this point, the war on drugs would slowly get more punitive. Under the Reagan administration in the 1980s, the true war on drugs began: Prison sentences for drugs went way up, especially through mandatory minimums. And more funding went to the law enforcement and interdiction side of the drug war than prevention and treatment.

To some degree, it might seem like Nixon began a movement that led to the harsh war on drugs we know today. But there's another way to look at it: Nixon simply rode the longstanding sentiment in America to get tough on crime and drugs. After all, Nixon actually followed Rockefeller's lead in proposing tougher prison sentences for drugs. And the administrations that followed Nixon seemed politically compelled to continue the drug war, leading to its big escalation in the 1980s and 1990s through the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations.

"The drug war had been building for decades prior to Nixon," Kathleen Frydl, a drug policy historian and author of The Drug Wars in America, 1940-1973, told me. "The shift from regulation to punishment was something that was underway for two decades prior to Nixon taking office. And it's something that endured long beyond just the campaign against counterculture."

Still, it's possible that Nixon also saw the kind of political benefit Ehrlichman claimed: A focus on law enforcement could disproportionately hurt black Americans, a voting bloc that had generally opposed Nixon. And it's certainly true that the war on drugs has hit black Americans the hardest.

The statistics bear out Ehrlichman's claim: Although black Americans aren't significantly more likely to use or sell drugs, they're much more likely to be arrested for them. And when black people are convicted of drug charges, they generally face longer prison sentences for the same crimes, according to a 2012 report from the US Sentencing Commission.

These are the statistics tens of thousands of people likely thought of when they shared the 1994 quote all across their social media feeds. The quote seemed to confirm what a lot of people suspected all along.

Historians are very skeptical. Nixon's personal hatred for drugs likely played a big role, regardless of his feelings about race and hippies. And so much of anti-drug efforts at the time went to public health measures, suggesting criminalization of any group was not the sole goal of Nixon's drug war.

"It's certainly true that Nixon didn't like blacks and didn't like hippies," Courtwright said. "But to assign his entire drug policy to his dislike of these two groups is just ridiculous."

Frydl echoed the sentiment: "I don't want to dissuade people from thinking that the drug war has allowed the state to execute what's been largely a racialized agenda. That is definitely true. But this particular quote is a superficial assessment."

Nixon didn't have to be explicitly racist for the drug war to end up disproportionately hurting black people

But here's the thing: Nixon didn't have to be explicitly racist for the drug war to end up disproportionately hurting black people. In fact, time and time again, the story of racism in America in the past few decades has been that black people are hurt by policies that appear race-neutral because people, including law enforcement, carry all sorts of subconscious biases against minority Americans. These biases are then further compounded with longstanding systemic disparities in housing and the workplace.

This is crucial to understanding America's remaining struggles with systemic racism. It's not so much that lawmakers are publicly and explicitly racist, as they were in the past. Instead, individuals' underlying racial biases and existing systemic issues have corrupted many policies that in theory should have never led to racist results.

The reform-minded Sentencing Project stated as much in a 2015 report about Black Lives Matter: "Myriad criminal justice policies that appear to be race-neutral collide with broader socioeconomic patterns to create a disparate racial impact. Policing policies and sentencing laws are two key sources of racial inequality."

So we don't need to think Ehrlichman's claim is true to worry about the drug war's racial disparities. We know the disparities are real. The question, then, isn't necessarily figuring out the motive behind the policies, but how we can reorient those policies to prevent more disparities in America's criminal justice system. And, surprisingly, treating drugs much like Nixon did at first as primarily a public health issue could provide part of the answer by preventing so many disproportionate arrests for simple drug use.

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Was Nixon's war on drugs a racially motivated crusade? It's a bit ... - Vox

By Dayvon Love

The incorporation of racial justice discourse into the Democratic Party and the liberal elite mainstream has had an impact on the nature of the policy demands that are put forward in the name of Black Liberation. More investment in social programs, criminal justice reform policies (with an emphasis on non-violent offenders), and diversity in high levels of government and corporate America have been the milquetoast approaches by liberals to respond to the demands for racial justice. This has impacted the conversation about reparations.

Over the last several years, there have been more mainstream political conversations about reparations, and it received particular attention during the 2020 presidential campaign. While people like Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Cory Booker gave a lukewarm embrace of a watered-down version of reparations, the discourse around it had the effect of distancing from its Black radical and Black nationalist intellectual or political antecedents.

Dr. Raymond Winbush, a renowned scholar on reparations, in his 2003 book ,Should America Pay?: Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations, laid out the historical and political framework from which the demand for reparations emerges. In the text, Winbush says:

Many people are unaware that the discussion of reparations for African people has a long history in the United States, going through three distinct stages with a nascent fourth, beginning in 2002. Stage 1, from 1865 to 1920, included the United States governments attempt to compensate its newly released three million enslaved Africans from bondage. This period also saw Callie Houses heroic efforts at establishing the Ex-slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, when she organized hundreds of thousands of ex-slaves for repayment from the government.

Stage II, from 1920 to 1968, saw Marcus Garvey, Queen Mother Audley Moore, and numerous Black nationalists press for reparations by educating thousands of persons about the unpaid debt owed to Africans in America. This is the period during which the reparations movement was seen as a Black Nationalist endeavor and civil rights organizations saw its goals as being unrealistic and extreme.

Stage III began in 1968 and continues today. The founding of several Black nationalist groups including the Republic of New Afrika (1968), the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (1987), and James Formans Black Manifesto (1969), which demanded $500 million from Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, served as a catalyst for launching what some have called the modern reparations movement

The emphasis on reparations being a policy demand rooted in the Black nationalist tradition underscores the importance of reparations as a part of Black peoples collective quest for sovereignty and self-determination. Investments in social programs, while important in addressing the short-term needs of the Black community, cannot be made synonymous with reparations.

The explosion of investments in non-profits and government services has historically had the impact of expanding the professional-managerial class that presides over these kinds of investments. This is often a multiracial class of people (White individuals certainly still exercising more people among this class) functioning as managers of Black suffering. They can use their work as disaster managers to advance their own professional careers while our communities remain relatively unchanged and disempowered.

Reparations are about providing the investments necessary for Black people to be able to build the institutional structures to practice freedom. We cannot be a free people if we are dependent on institutions outside of our community for our survival. Black people need an independent ecosystem of institutions that can interact with the larger society from a position of strength and not be reliant on the benevolence of others outside of the community.

The mainstream media has avoided this frame for reparations in favor of a liberal mainstream rendering. This would empower the non-profit industrial complex to expand its control over the institutions that govern Black civic, economic, and political life.

As Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS) pursues a local ordinance through the Baltimore City Council that is compliant with HB 837 which passed the Maryland State Legislature during the 2022 legislative session we will be working with the City Council to craft an ordinance that lives up to the legacy of reparations advocacy. While the focus is on reparations for the war on drugs given the connection to cannabis legalization that will likely happen next year this is one effort among many other important endeavors to advance Black peoples ability to function in this society as a sovereign and empowered community.

Every county in Maryland will eventually have to pass an ordinance that will determine how they spend their portion of the Community Repair and Reinvestment Fund created by HB 837. We hope that other counties throughout the state will use this same frame of reference when they are crafting their legislation. This is regarding the allocation of the resources from its portion of the Community Repair and Reinvestment Fund, which will be funded by tax revenues not less than 30 percent of the total revenues from the sale of recreational cannabis.

Dayvon Love is director of public policy for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, a grassroots Black think tank.

The opinions on this page are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the AFRO. Send letters to The Afro-American 145 W. Ostend Street Ste 600,Office #536,Baltimore, MD 21230or fax to 1-877-570-9297 or e-mail toeditor@afro.com

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Reparations for the war on drugs - Afro American

In 2001,Portugal took a radical step. It became the first country in the world todecriminalise the consumption of all drugs. TIME Magazine recently reported,back then, Portugal was in the grip of heroin addiction. An estimated 1 percentof the populationbankers, students, socialiteswere hooked on heroin andPortugal had the highest rate of HIV infection in the entire European Union.It was carnage, recalls Amrico Nave, a psychologist and President ofCrescer, an outreach NGO focused on harm-reduction practices. In 2001, he wasworking with the addicts living in the neighbourhood. People had sores filled withmaggots. Some lost their arms or legs due to overusing.

It allstarted in Olho

Accordingto most reports, the crisis began in Olho. Its difficult to understand why itshould be Olho, but this was a prosperous time for this city, tourism wasgrowing, and currency flowed throughout the southern Algarve region. But by theend of the decade, heroin began washing up on Olhos shores. Overnight, thisslice of the Algarve coast became one of the drug capitals of Europe: one inevery 100 Portuguese was battling a problematic heroin addiction at that time.Headlines in the local press raised the alarm about overdose deaths and risingcrime. The rate of HIV infection in Portugal became the highest in the EuropeanUnion.

In 2001,Portugal became the first country to decriminalise the possession andconsumption of all illicit substances. Rather than being arrested, those caughtwith a personal supply might be given a warning, a small fine, or told toappear before a local commission a doctor, a lawyer or a social worker about treatment, harm reduction, and the support services that were availableto them.

This was a revolutionary approach to dealing withdrugs. It is important to note that Portugal stabilised its drug crisis, but itdidnt make it disappear. Drug-related deaths, imprisonment and infection ratesplummeted, but Portugal still had to deal with the health complications oflong-term drug use.

Thedifference between legalisation and decriminalisation

The firstthing to understand is that decriminalisation in Portugal removes criminalsanctions against the personal use of drugs. A person under the possession of adrug under a specific amount will not be prosecuted (defined as 10 days worthfor personal use). However, this does not mean that individuals are neverarrested for drug-related crimes or behaviour. While the consumption of drugsis decriminalised, thats not the case for the selling of drugs.

Readerswill probably know that in certain areas, buying drugs is not a great problem.People are approached in the street, especially in tourist areas. This isillegal and will result in criminal prosecution.

How doesPortugal deal with drug users

The basisof Portugals attitude towards drug users is to treat rather than imprison.This is mainly organised through the public network services of treatment forillicit substance dependence, under the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction,and the Ministry of Health. In addition to public services, certification andprotocols between NGOs and other public or private treatment services ensure awide access to quality-controlled services encompassing several treatmentmethods. The public services provided are free of charge and accessible to alldrug users who seek treatment.

There are73 specialised treatment facilities (public and certified private therapeuticcommunities), 14 detoxification units, 70 public outpatient facilities and 13accredited day centres. Portugal is divided into 18 districts. There is fullcoverage of drug outpatient treatment in virtually all of Portugal.

The socalled substitution treatment is widely available in Portugal, through publicservices such as specialised treatment centres, health centres, hospitals andpharmacies as well as some NGOs and non-profit organisations.

Why dontother countries follow Portugals strategy?

Officialfigures show that Portugals approach to drug users is very successful. Youhave to ask why the rest of the World doesnt adopt Portugals approach.

The NewYork Times reported, Many people are also coming to Portugal to explore what asmarter, health-driven approach might look like. Delegations from around theworld are flying to Lisbon to study what is now referred to as the Portuguesemodel. Portugal initially was scolded around the world for its experiment, asa weak link in the war on drugs, but today its hailed as a model. Oneattraction of the Portuguese approach is that its incomparably cheaper totreat people than to jail them. According to the New York Times the HealthMinistry in Portugal spends less than $10 per citizen per year on itssuccessful drug policy. Meanwhile, the U.S. has spent some $10,000 perhousehold.

One issueseems to be the subject or the legalisation of the sale of marijuana. Manyreports I have read seem to say that if they decriminalise the personal use ofdrugs that they should, at least, legalise the sale of marijuana which fewcountries wish to do. Holland has done it, but few others want to follow. Thisseems like confused thinking to say the least.

Portugalhas got it right, the vast majority of governments agree, but they wont followPortugals lead. You have to ask why not?

Disclaimer:The views expressed on this page are those of the author and not of The Portugal News.

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War on Drugs? Portugal Might Have the Answer - The Portugal News