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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> If you want to understand why America's police act like an occupying army... then you have to start with the Drug War.

Go back much further than that. Go back to the civil rights movement. Go back to jim crow. The history of the American war on drugs was born of racism and continues its birthright. That is the real sticking point, the source of the high emotions surrounding drugs. The drug war is a proxy for much more difficult issues.

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There was definitely racism in the passing and enforcing of these laws.

There was also definitely communities overran with drug related crime that were desperate for help. When a single mom can't buy her kid a bicycle because the last 3 have been stolen out from under him by addicts looking to score, she's going to ask the her elected representatives for help.

> When a single mom can't buy her kid a bicycle because the last 3 have been stolen out from under him by addicts looking to score

That seems like burglary/robbery rather than a drug-related offense.

How would a burglary intended to obtain money to buy drugs not be "drug-related"?

Does intent matter when you commit a crime? Do you get a different sentence if you use the money to buy drugs rather than food?

Intent absolutely matters - think murder vs. involuntary manslaughter, or even first degree versus second degree murder. A lot of legal definitions of crimes even include the statement "with intent to..." - "drug possession with intent to distribute" is a good example.

It's also completely besides the point here, as we're discussing the statement:

> There was also definitely communities overran with drug related crime that were desperate for help.

arguing that these sorts of drug-related crimes motivated some communities to embrace "hard on crime" attitudes.

That latter paragraph sounds a lot like the things people say when they want to deny racism was part of the war on drugs.

What often gets missed is that high up members of the Republican party are on record as intentionally escalating the war on drugs to attack their enemies (black people and anti war hippies amongst others).

So if they thought that the war on drugs wasn't a "problem" but rather an opportunity, then they have no incentive to "solve" the problem, in fact quite the opposite. Any consequences that then follow from drug related crime must ultimately fall at their door, not the person they've led into addiction by policy.

As a concrete example, Bush Sr.'s famous speech on crack involved begging a drug dealer to come to Pennsylvania Avenue so they could include that fact in it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/tours/s...

> But obtaining the crack was no easy feat. To match the words crafted by the speech-writers, Drug Enforcement Administration agents lured a suspected District drug dealer to Lafayette Park four days before the speech so they could make what appears to have been the agency's first undercover crack buy in a park better known for its location across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House than for illegal drug activity, according to officials familiar with the case.

> In fact, when first contacted by an undercover DEA agent posing as a drug buyer, the teenage suspect seemed baffled by the agent's request.

> "Where the {expletive} is the White House?" he replied in a conversation that was secretly tape-recorded by the DEA.

> "We had to manipulate him to get him down there," said William McMullan, assistant special agent in charge of DEA's Washington field office. "It wasn't easy."

The motivation for the war on drugs is not borne out of racism, but a combination of greed and public safety concern.

nope see the original conviction of very famous black singers in the 1950s its right in the court transcripts read up please

"Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."

"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."

"In 2013, the ACLU published a report titled "The War on Marijuana in Black and White". The report found that despite marijuana use being roughly equal between blacks and whites, blacks are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decriminalization_of_non-medic...

> "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."

This one is the original marihuana legislation, predating Nixon's war on drugs, right?

> "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."

When was this originally published? I keep seeing it in a 2016 magazine, which is a bit odd given how groundbreaking a revelation it is. Especially considering the quote was collected 22 years prior, and the man died 17 years prior. Was this around and just not well known at the time?

> "In 2013, the ACLU published a report titled "The War on Marijuana in Black and White". The report found that despite marijuana use being roughly equal between blacks and whites, blacks are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession."

Adverse impact, problematic enough, does not imply something was made with racist intent.

> Adverse impact, problematic enough, does not imply something was made with racist intent.

It shows that the intent continues to be racist. This disparity is ongoing, not historical; if it's truly not racist, why not bring the amount of possession charges in line with usage?

So sickle cell anemia is racist? You can't tell the intent of something by the impact alone.

Sickle cell anemia wasn't imposed via law.

are you arguing that it cannot be racist unless it's law? So if I start throwing around racial epithets it's not racist because it's not law?

> It shows that the intent continues to be racist.

It shows the impact, not the intent, continues to be racist. It doesn't really say anything about intent, at least without a lot more data. If white and black usage differ in kind somehow - say, pot brownies vs smoking on the street (I have no idea if there is a racial disparity here) - it could lead to a difference in police involvement without any racial discrimination.

indeed, and as another poster pointed out, it could also be because police monitor high crime areas more strictly, and so the arrests related to marijuana tends to reflect that fact.

So gun control is racist? You can't tell the intent of something by the impact alone.

Incidental arrests arise from higher police presence in minority’s neighborhoods due to higher instances of major crime in those neighborhoods.

If I go fishing for redfish I’m going to end up catching a lot more saltwater fish incidentally. Doesn’t mean I hate freshwater fish, that just means in not fishing in an area where I’m going to find many freshwater fish.

> 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.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs

There are reasons to be skeptical of this alleged quote by Ehrlichman. As user GatorD42 pointed out when this was brought up before:

>...Baum claims Ehrlichman said that to him in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999).

This is an amazing and explosive quote - if Baum had included it in his book in 1996 I am sure it would have garnered a great deal of attention. Instead Baum would not include it in his book, but instead would wait for decades later when Ehrlichman was no longer around to dispute it.

At any rate, if the quote was actually said by Ehrlichman, it doesn't actually describe the drug polices of the Nixon administration. While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs", the actual substance of his policies seem to be different than what people think it was:

>...I have been fortunate over the years to discuss the distorted memory of Nixon's drug policies with almost all of his key advisors as well as with historians. Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).

http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/who-started-the...

You are deeply incorrect. The drug war is an explicit war on non-whites; the drug war disproportionately effects POC more than any other factor by an enormous amount.

http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war

This is not correct. Just look at marijuana: people stoked racist fears in order to make it illegal, and today four times as many black people as white people are arrested for possession, even though usage is roughly equal. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/marijuana-prohibition-racist_...

Racism is undoubtedly a major factor.

https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

I agree. "Born out of racism" is too strong. I'm not even sure what it means exactly. Was racism rampant at the time? Yes. But the war on drugs still would've happened if there was no racism. Those rugurgitated figures on black vs white drug use vs convictions misses the boat. Go to any city and recognize the color of people that control the drug market. The majority of them are not white. The police don't focus on users, they focus on dealers-- that's where the violent crime is. If you don't want to buy drugs in the city, go to a jamband show. A microcosm of this phenomenon is the nitrous scene. Who makes up the nitrous mafia? Black dudes in black hoodies. They sell to nearly all-white hippies. If you try to sell nitrous(compete with the mafia) you will be beaten up or killed. The nitrous mess is a blight on the otherwise positive, peaceful music scene. If you were to try to stop it, who would you go after? The peaceful users who are in actuality the root of the problem, or the violent dealers?

> Go to any city and recognize the color of people that control the drug market. The majority of them are not white. The police don't focus on users, they focus on dealers-- that's where the violent crime is.

The disparity is in charges of possession. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/racial-disparity-in-marijuana...

Even with simple possession charges, police are looking to bust dealers(or at least players in the game), not users. With players you can make deals and move up the chain, users are a dead end. The disparity in charges of possession doesn't necessarily signify racism to me.

The early days of the drug war, the ban on pot, was very much a racial thing. There were "scientific" studies and political speeches focusing on how dangerous it would make the negro population, how black men high on pot would be raping white women. Generations later, the crackdown on crack cocaine, as opposed to the more expensive normal cocaine, also broke down along racial lines. The drug wars in other countries, those without America's racial history, have been very different. What makes the US drug war what it is, as opposed to say Canada's or the UK's, is its grounding in America's 'unique' race relations.

In how many African countries, Middle Eastern, or Asian countries is marijuana legal?

Race has little to do with the criminalization of such drugs, as evidenced by the answer to the above question.

The international criminalization was driven in large part by Western pressure (and sometimes directly a remnant of Western colonialism).

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