American drug policy

Visible Problems with “Invisible Pot Addicts”

by

Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Brooks Hudson, a PhD candidate in history at Southern Illinois University. 

The Atlantic, as one critic remarked, “perfectly captures…the puzzled dining club member’s approach to civic and political organizing, and the all-around obtuseness of elite discourse”; it is an “ideological compromised organ of beltway consensus.” Matt Christman, of Chapo Trap House fame, quipped in one episode that The Atlantic is “neoliberal Dabiq,” a death-cult of discredited ideas concealed in a glossy facade. Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic‘s editor-in-chief, was an early and enthusiastic promoter of the Iraq War, injecting into the bloodstream such fantasies as the collaboration between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. His journalistic style, as one watchdog organization put it, was “complete with cherry-picked evidence, dubious inferences, rejection of contradictory evidence and ideological blinders.”

Don’t get me wrong, The Atlantic isn’t total garbage, but, like a kitchen after Thanksgiving, garbage is involved.

By that I mean that the Atlantic has a tendency to generate two kinds of content: the inane and the disingenuous. An example of the former: attributing “bigotry on the right,” to the left. Another example: solving New York’s subway system à la hoverboards.

But Annie Lowrey’s recent article, “America’s Invisible Pot Addicts,” isn’t inane, just disingenuous.

Screen Shot 2019-01-03 at 8.39.05 AM

Read more

“From Whence It Came”: Rethinking the Federal Role When Discussing the War on Drugs

by

Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Matthew June, a PhD candidate at Northwestern University. June’s current work studies the sources of federal power to prosecute national drug laws.

The United States has a massive prison problem. As more attention has been drawn to this stark reality, it has become equally clear that there are no simple solutions or easy explanations. Nonetheless, while many have cited the “war on drugs,” others have dismissed this as too small a part in the larger problem. Last summer a Washington Post Op-Ed argued, “ending the war on drugs would not end mass incarceration.” Taking these back of the envelope calculations a step further, Slate highlighted how reforming the federal system wouldn’t help the country’s 1.3 million state prisoners. This proposition has again come to the fore in debates over Hillary Clinton’s responsibility for the rise of mass incarceration. Arguing against such a conclusion, German Lopez of Vox recently insisted, “Federal policy is not the cause of mass incarceration” because “federal prisons house only 13 percent of the overall prison population.”

June 1

As there are “lies, damn lies, and statistics,” there are many ways to look at these numbers – especially the fact that over half of all federal prisoners are there for drug charges. While it is reasonable to note how this is only a small step for criminal justice reform, changes in federal drug sentencing could benefit nearly 1 out of 20 people under some form of local, state, or national supervision. Put another way, releasing every federal drug offender might not bring us out of the top spot for world incarceration rates, but even a five percent dent in our overall numbers cannot be dismissed. Just ask my students if they wouldn’t mind dropping from an “A-” to a “B+” and you will get a pretty good sense of how just a slim percent difference can seem mighty important to those directly affected. But this somewhat flippant re-examination of the statistics only belies a small sliver of the overall federal role in the “war on drugs” and its impact on mass incarceration. The 105,000 men and women behind bars for federal drug charges are just the most visible part of the federal role in the national “war on drugs.” And the causes and consequences of that role demand ongoing attention from scholars and others.

Read more

Oscar Hopefuls Contending with Drug War History

by

(Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by our contributing editor Matthew June.)

For your consideration… Oscar contenders are hitting theaters, awards season is coming, and more films than you might realize have ties to the history of U.S. drug policy. Although the film barely shows any trafficking and rarely even mentions drugs, the context of Sicario will be obvious to most viewers. Hyper-realistic, violent, and morally ambiguous, the film plumbs the depths of our failed drug war and its devastating consequences for the U.S.-Mexico border region. Without much hope for a viable solution, the film also offers no explanation for why the U.S. finds itself in this position.

Sicario Poster (Lionsgate Motion Pictures) & Bridge of Spies Poster (DreamWorks Pictures)
Sicario Poster (Lionsgate Motion Pictures) & Bridge of Spies Poster (DreamWorks Pictures)

Next on the docket for Academy voters, Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies arrives in theaters this weekend. At first glance, the latest starring vehicle for Tom Hanks might seem like the antithesis of Sicario. It is a period-piece drama with a moral protagonist helping Cold War America retrieve one of its heroes. Bridge of Spies is based on the life of former Nuremburg attorney, James B. Donovan (Hanks), who successfully negotiated the release of Captain Francis Gary Powers when the Soviet Union shot down his U-2 spy plane. After this mission – and the focus of Spielberg’s film – ended, however, Donovan took on another assignment that gave him an important supporting role in the development of federal drug policy. Exploring that overlooked history, in turn, offers another vantage for surveying the blighted backdrop of Sicario.

Read more