Losing Votes

My friend Frank sent me an e-mail with a link to the following analysis of the Drug War.

Mexico, which neither produces nor uses a lot of drugs, lies between Colombia, which produces vast amounts of drugs, and Americans, who want vast amounts of drugs. Washington does not want Americans to have vast amounts of drugs. Neither did it want to lose votes by imprisoning white users of drugs, such as college students, high-school students, professors, Congressmen, lawyers, and blue-collar guys driving bulldozers. The answer was to make Mexico fight Washington's wars.

But Mexico couldn't fight the narcos, because the United States was actually on the side of the traficantes. Does this sound counter-intuitive? What happened was that the narcos gave the Americans the huge quantites of drugs they wanted, and in return Americans gave the narcos huge amounts of money and military-grade weaponry: chiefly AKs, but also grenades and the occasional RPG. The Mexican police, lightly armed, barely paid, and utterly corrupt, could do nothing against these odds. The narcos had a further argument: Do what we say, and we will give you money. Otherwise, we will kill your family.

You figure it out.

So we have a program designed to kill Mexicans because the government fears arresting white drug users in any great quantity. Of course this is incredible information. Until you read Under Cover of Privilege: College Drug Dealing in the United States on page 17 of the pdf.

However, as our research on college drug dealers reveals, the war on drugs in the United States has not been waged with an even hand. Instead, despite the unyielding “zero-tolerance” zealotry accompanying U.S. drug policy, the illicit drug-using and drug-dealing behaviors of the most vulnerable and marginalized members of U.S. society have been more heavily scrutinized by the drug war hawks than similarly illicit behaviors of those with more social, political, and economic capital.

Vulnerable and Marginalized? I believe what this academic means is Blacks. I guess saying that Blacks (and to a lesser extent Hispanics) are the target of the Drug War is not done in academic circles. Although the previous section of the pdf is entitled Getting the Message: Hip-Hop Reports on the Drug War. Well everyone has their own style. And each section was written by a different set of authors.

So let me give you the bottom line:

The Drug War is a racist enterprise.
It will not stand.

Cross Posted at Classical Values