Is there evidence to suggest the "war on drugs" was a cover for class warfare?
score:32
Yes. That Erlichman quote is evidence, and here are two scholarly articles making similar arguments:
Nunn, Kenneth B. "Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the" War on Drugs" was a "War on Blacks"." J. Gender Race & Just. 6 (2002): 381-473.
Goetz, Edward G. "The US war on drugs as urban policy." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 20.3 (1996): 539-549.
Upvote:18
I don't think that's the right question. You're not asking the wrong question, but it's too simple. I'm sure you can find plenty of evidence for or against the idea, but the question doesn't reflect the messy complexities of reality so neither will the answers.
As with most socioeconomic issues, the question of why the War On Drugs started and has persisted is a very tangled one that probably has no authoritative answer and there's no one person or group responsible. It's often difficult to tell if the negative consequences were intended or if it was co-opted. Probably plenty of both. Were there people who used the War On Drugs for overtly cynical and racist ends? Yes. Were there people who sincerely believed drugs are bad, mmkay? Yes.
I would recommend "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice" covering not only the War On Drugs, but criminal justice in general. It's been through 11 editions now, and the two authors have excellent pedigrees. It'll help build up a broader understanding of the socioeconomic pressures behind the War On Drugs.
Jeffrey Reiman is the William Fraser McDowell Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at American University in Washington, D.C. In addition to The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, Dr. Reiman is the author of In Defense of Political Philosophy (1972), Justice and Modern Moral Philosophy (1990), Critical Moral Liberalism: Theory and Practice (1997), The Death Penalty: For and Against (with Louis P. Pojman, 1998), Abortion and the Ways We Value Human Life (1999), As Free and as Just as Possible (2012), and more than 60 articles in philosophy and criminal justice journals and anthologies.
Paul Leighton is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology at Eastern Michigan University. In addition to The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, Dr. Leighton is the co-author of Punishment for Sale (with Donna Selman, 2010) and Class, Race, Gender and Crime (with Gregg Barak and Allison Cotton, 4th edition, 2013). He is also co-editor, with Jeffrey Reiman, of the anthology Criminal Justice Ethics (2001). In addition to his publications, Dr. Leighton is webmaster for PaulsJusticePage.com and PaulsJusticeBlog.com.
This applies the author's idea of Pyrrhic Defeat Theory, that the people most able to change a system also benefit from the system so they're unmotivated to fix it, to criminal justice. While the War On Drugs might have originally been conceived with good intentions, Reiman and Leighton make the argument there's many social and economic benefits to those in power to keep it going. Racism is one of them, to which Pyrrhic Defeat Theory can also be applied.
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