The 1980s War on Drugs created street-level policing as a new enforcement front

Evidence

The observed changes in the intensity and racial disparities in drug law enforcement are largely due to policy changes adopted as part of the “War on Drugs” of the mid-1980s. Following the cocaine-related deaths of two prominent athletes, Don Rogers and Len Bias, and the associated growing public concern about crack cocaine use, federal policymakers launched a new War on Drugs. Unlike previous drug wars that focused on source countries (e.g., crop eradication), transportation routes (e.g., disrupting the “French Connection”), and interdiction at the borders, the drug war of the mid-1980s added domestic, street-level drug enforcement as a new front (see, for example, Boyum & Reuter, 2005; Musto, 1999). The philosophy guiding the reinvigorated drug war is exemplified by the first National Drug Control Strategy, which stated, “Making streets safer and drug users more accountable for their actions requires the criminal justice system to expand and reform in an unprecedented way. Effective street-level enforcement means dramatically increasing the number of drug offenders arrested” (Office of National Drug Control Policy, 1989, p. 24). The War on Drugs’ philosophy also called for greater use of incarceration and longer terms of imprisonment for drug offenders (ONDCP, 1989) in order to deter drug offending and drug-related crime. This philosophical change in the War on Drugs provided both a plan of action and a rationale for these actions. According to this philosophy, the solution to drug problems was to hold individual users accountable for their actions using harsh sanctions; America needed more drug arrests, more prosecution of drug cases, and more punitive sentences for drug offenders—not drug treatment or other social services. Thus, the War on Drugs spurred police, prosecutors, and judges to increase their emphasis on drug offenders and to use punishment to cure individual and societal drug problems. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1059

Categorization

• FICTION: The death of Len Bias — an athlete killed by his own product — catalyzing a national punishment regime echoes the tragic scapegoat figure in Things Fall Apart.
• BMF: Two celebrity deaths from crack cocaine triggering a national punitive escalation likely lines up with the machinery of public-spirited destruction by which Reverend Okonkwo’s own actions initiate sacrifice in Things Fall Apart.
• XREF: connects to: The 2011 UK riots directly echoed 1980s riots sparked by police killings — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1292