NOT LONG AGO was published here an article entitled "The Phony War on Drugs", which presented the highly controversial assertion that the war on drugs, initiated by president richard nixon in the early nineteen seventies and reinvigorated by president nancy reagan in the early nineteen eighties, is not so much a war on drugs, as a war on minorities, specifically african americans.
This website has a surprising readership, and among that readership must surely have been some strong reactions, including, surely, expressions of amazement and disbelief. How could anyone seriously say such a thing! Why needlessly inject racism into a perfectly noble and honorable crusade against the devastating impact of illegal recreational drug use in america! What an obscene thing to do! How horrible, how laughable! And all such hyperbolic, righteous nonsense.
The morally superior war on drugs crowd might be interested to know that natiional public radio reported that illegal drug use in america occurs at an identical rate among blacks, whites, and latinos; equal throughout american society, but that drug related arrests, buying and selling, were several times higher among blacks and minorities! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, little miss upper middle class white girl crusader for all that is pure and holy!
You want to see the numbers for yourself, and the source of these numbers? Call your local NPR affiliate; NPR is pretty good at backing up what it says. Statistics don't lie; they can be twisted, turned, and reinterpreted ad nauseum, but they do not lie. If you have equal numbers of black people and white people using drugs, and many more black people are being arrested for it, what you have is, pure and simple, racism.
The morally superior anti drug crusaders might be interested in knowing this; or they might not be. Human nature is such that the more morally superior one is, the less inclined one is to hear anything, no matter how concretely persuasive, which contradicts and threatens said moral superiority.
But facts do not lie, nor are they often misleading. The sanctimonious phony war on drugs is a war on black people.
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