Reagan launched the drug war in 1982 when drug crime was already declining

Evidence

“We can fight the drug problem, and we can win,” Reagan announced. It was an astonishing move. Drug crime was declining. Only 2 percent of Americans viewed drugs as the nation’s most pressing problem. Few considered marijuana to be a particularly dangerous drug, especially in comparison with the more addictive heroine. Substance-abuse therapists were shocked by Reagan’s unfounded claim that America could “put drug abuse on the run through stronger law enforcement.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1084

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader historical pattern of moral panics constructed against a backdrop of declining underlying rates; echoes the same inversion Kendi documents where policy precedes the claimed problem.
• ADDENDUM: Parallel to moral panics over dress/behavior in the immodesty article — a manufactured crisis that itself creates the deviance it claims to answer.