Mojotronica
Expect Irony.
A decent summary of the anti-drug acts of the late 80s... probably the most Constitutionally egregious legislation ever passed by Congress. A couple of points for further investigation: how the hell did they get it past the Supreme Court? And it doesn't emphasize enough that the Acts empowered police agencies to seize private property WITHOUT A CONVICTION.
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Towards the end of the Reagan Administration a tough on crime and drugs approach prevailed that included concepts such as accountability and zero-tolerance. The feeling among conservative politicians was that drug addicts should suffer some loss as a result of their behavior. It was felt that A fight ensued between the popular President and a Congress desperate to not be seen as soft on drugs or crime. With the sudden death of basketball hopeful Len Bias, a new word entered the American vocabulary: crack cocaine. The belief was that the earlier period of laxity had led to problems with newer, more dangerous drugs such as crack and designer drugs, and that one solution to recreational drug use was to punish causal users. There was little sympathy for drug users and addicts, and especially with a newer, far more frightening word in the vocabulary AIDS the metaphor of drug addict as disease-spreading vampire was given new life. With very little debate, Congressional leaders quickly passed a series of laws that elevated the War on Drugs to a level that would have grave implications for the nations legal and public health systems.
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 came on the heels of the crack and AIDS epidemics. It established a scale of mandatory minimum sentences for convicted drug offenders, effectively negating the input of judges in sentencing and handing unprecedented power to federal prosecutors. Penalties for high-profile, high-fear factor drugs such as crack cocaine were especially tough, with equal penalties (5 to 40 years in prison) for possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine as for 5 grams of crack cocaine. These laws were disastrous for minority defendants and lead to a system of racial bias and unjust adjudication. Despite protests from the United States Sentencing Commission and the federal judiciary, Congress attacked any attempt to change the sentencing guidelines. Even the Clinton Administration, which would be expected to be more sympathetic to issues of racial bias, rejected recommendations for removing the disparity in sentencing that left minority defendants at a disadvantage. Any effort that might be seen as soft on drugs and crime was seen as political suicide.
Under the Bush Administration, the second Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed in 1988. This legislation formally established the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAHMSA). The Head of the ONDCP - known as Drug Czar - was to be a cabinet-level position and tasked with the duty of preparing an annual national strategy to combat drug use. But since the position held no budget or enforcement authority, the position would largely be a spokesperson for the White Houses philosophy on drugs. President Bush named William Bennett, former Department of Education Secretary under Reagan and conservative mouth-piece, to the position. Bennett set about disseminating Reagans previous zero-tolerance orthodoxy, minimizing the medical aspects and maximizing the moral failing of drug addiction, re-invoking the Moral Model of addiction and demanding accountability from the mentally ill. Bennett gave voice to the conservative belief that drug addicts as well as those who challenged the White House position by using drugs even experimentally - should suffer some personal loss for their transgressions.
The second Anti-Drug Abuse Act also required Surgeon Generals warning labels on alcoholic beverages, lowered the federal Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) standard for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) from 0.10% to 0.08% (and 0.02% for drivers under 21 years of age). The Act also encouraged state governments to institute license forfeiture for drivers convicted of DUI. The Act adopted a new official vocabulary intended to change the perception of drugs, for instance dropping the term recreational use in order to indicate that there was no such thing for illicit drugs like marijuana. This blurred the distinction between the experimenter, the user, the abuser and the addict. The Act also strengthened the ability of prosecutors to seize the assets of persons convicted (or even suspected) of drug distribution. The Act also reinstated the death penalty for major drug traffickers and significantly lengthened sentences for those convicted of drug offenses.
The consequences of these two Act were immediate and severe. The United States experienced a phenomenal surge in incarceration rates to the point that the national prison population broke the two million in the year 2000. The differences in sentencing between jurisdictions (state vs. federal, and county vs. county) created wild disparity in adjudication of drug offenses. Usually these differences correlated positively to race. In addition, the fact that prosecuting attorneys had the power to move drug cases from state court to federal court to increase conviction rates and length of sentencing dramatically shifted the balance of power from judges to the U.S. Attorneys Offices. Conservative politicians - such as Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) of the House Judiciary Committee employed this tactic as an attempt to undermine the authority of federal circuit court judges who were perceived as liberal and thus soft on crime.
The current levels of incarceration in the United States are, to say the least, historic. That a nation that calls itself a democracy could have the highest per capita incarceration rate in human history is deeply significant and troubling. When numbers such as two million are discussed, the problem is not just a matter of law it falls back into the lab of public health, and we start using words like epidemic and threat to the nations health. Replacing the epidemic of drug use with a far worse epidemic of wholesale incarceration mostly along racial and political lines subverts the democratic process in ways that will be the subject of history classes and graduate student dissertations long into the future. Provided that we survive it.
http://www.addictiondoctor.com/page...ugabuseacts.htm
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Towards the end of the Reagan Administration a tough on crime and drugs approach prevailed that included concepts such as accountability and zero-tolerance. The feeling among conservative politicians was that drug addicts should suffer some loss as a result of their behavior. It was felt that A fight ensued between the popular President and a Congress desperate to not be seen as soft on drugs or crime. With the sudden death of basketball hopeful Len Bias, a new word entered the American vocabulary: crack cocaine. The belief was that the earlier period of laxity had led to problems with newer, more dangerous drugs such as crack and designer drugs, and that one solution to recreational drug use was to punish causal users. There was little sympathy for drug users and addicts, and especially with a newer, far more frightening word in the vocabulary AIDS the metaphor of drug addict as disease-spreading vampire was given new life. With very little debate, Congressional leaders quickly passed a series of laws that elevated the War on Drugs to a level that would have grave implications for the nations legal and public health systems.
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 came on the heels of the crack and AIDS epidemics. It established a scale of mandatory minimum sentences for convicted drug offenders, effectively negating the input of judges in sentencing and handing unprecedented power to federal prosecutors. Penalties for high-profile, high-fear factor drugs such as crack cocaine were especially tough, with equal penalties (5 to 40 years in prison) for possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine as for 5 grams of crack cocaine. These laws were disastrous for minority defendants and lead to a system of racial bias and unjust adjudication. Despite protests from the United States Sentencing Commission and the federal judiciary, Congress attacked any attempt to change the sentencing guidelines. Even the Clinton Administration, which would be expected to be more sympathetic to issues of racial bias, rejected recommendations for removing the disparity in sentencing that left minority defendants at a disadvantage. Any effort that might be seen as soft on drugs and crime was seen as political suicide.
Under the Bush Administration, the second Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed in 1988. This legislation formally established the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAHMSA). The Head of the ONDCP - known as Drug Czar - was to be a cabinet-level position and tasked with the duty of preparing an annual national strategy to combat drug use. But since the position held no budget or enforcement authority, the position would largely be a spokesperson for the White Houses philosophy on drugs. President Bush named William Bennett, former Department of Education Secretary under Reagan and conservative mouth-piece, to the position. Bennett set about disseminating Reagans previous zero-tolerance orthodoxy, minimizing the medical aspects and maximizing the moral failing of drug addiction, re-invoking the Moral Model of addiction and demanding accountability from the mentally ill. Bennett gave voice to the conservative belief that drug addicts as well as those who challenged the White House position by using drugs even experimentally - should suffer some personal loss for their transgressions.
The second Anti-Drug Abuse Act also required Surgeon Generals warning labels on alcoholic beverages, lowered the federal Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) standard for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) from 0.10% to 0.08% (and 0.02% for drivers under 21 years of age). The Act also encouraged state governments to institute license forfeiture for drivers convicted of DUI. The Act adopted a new official vocabulary intended to change the perception of drugs, for instance dropping the term recreational use in order to indicate that there was no such thing for illicit drugs like marijuana. This blurred the distinction between the experimenter, the user, the abuser and the addict. The Act also strengthened the ability of prosecutors to seize the assets of persons convicted (or even suspected) of drug distribution. The Act also reinstated the death penalty for major drug traffickers and significantly lengthened sentences for those convicted of drug offenses.
The consequences of these two Act were immediate and severe. The United States experienced a phenomenal surge in incarceration rates to the point that the national prison population broke the two million in the year 2000. The differences in sentencing between jurisdictions (state vs. federal, and county vs. county) created wild disparity in adjudication of drug offenses. Usually these differences correlated positively to race. In addition, the fact that prosecuting attorneys had the power to move drug cases from state court to federal court to increase conviction rates and length of sentencing dramatically shifted the balance of power from judges to the U.S. Attorneys Offices. Conservative politicians - such as Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) of the House Judiciary Committee employed this tactic as an attempt to undermine the authority of federal circuit court judges who were perceived as liberal and thus soft on crime.
The current levels of incarceration in the United States are, to say the least, historic. That a nation that calls itself a democracy could have the highest per capita incarceration rate in human history is deeply significant and troubling. When numbers such as two million are discussed, the problem is not just a matter of law it falls back into the lab of public health, and we start using words like epidemic and threat to the nations health. Replacing the epidemic of drug use with a far worse epidemic of wholesale incarceration mostly along racial and political lines subverts the democratic process in ways that will be the subject of history classes and graduate student dissertations long into the future. Provided that we survive it.
http://www.addictiondoctor.com/page...ugabuseacts.htm
