Sonny's Blues: The War On Drugs

The American “War on Drugs” war created to keep an exorbitant amount of people behind bars, and in a subservient status. First, America has a storied history when it comes to marijuana use. However, within the last 50 years legislation pertaining to drug use and punishment has increased significantly. In the modern era, especially hard times have hit minority communities thanks to these drug laws. While being unfairly targeted by drug laws and law enforcement, minorities in America are having a difficult time trying to be productive members of society.

Many tragic events happen in this short story that allows the reader to create an assumption for an underlying theme of racism. John Baldwin has a way of telling the story of Sonny’s drug problem as a tragic reality of the African American experience. The reader has to depict textual evidence to prove how the lifestyle and Harlem has affected almost everything. The narrator describes Harlem as “... some place I didn’t want to go. I certainly didn’t want to know how it felt. It filled everything, the people, the houses, the music, the dark, quicksilver barmaid, with menace; and this menace was their reality” (Baldwin 60). Another key part in this story is when the narrator and Sonny’s mother is telling the story of a deceased uncle. The mother explains how dad’s brother was drunk crossing the road and got hit by a car full of drunk white men. Baldwin specifically puts emphasis on the word “white” to describe the men for a comparison to the culture of dad and his brother.

In the past forty years, the United States has spent over $2.5 trillion dollars funding enforcement and prevention in the fight against drug use in America (Suddath). Despite the efforts made towards cracking down on drug smugglers, growers, and suppliers, statistics show that addiction rates have remained unchanged and the number of people using illegal drugs is increasing daily (Sledge). Regardless of attempts to stem the supply of drugs, the measure and quality of drugs goes up while the price goes down (Koebler). Now with the world’s highest incarceration rates and greatest illegal drug consumption (Sledge), the United States proves that the “war on drugs” is a war that is not being won.

“Northern nativists battled against the flood of immigrant Catholics and Jews, western whites attacked the Chinese with legal bans and racist programs, the South enshrined Jim Crow disenfranchisement and segregation in their state constitutions, and the nation took up its own piece of the white man’s burden in its imperialist expansion into the Caribbean and the Philippines. In this racially and religiously charged climate, the war on drugs became a unifying element in a crusade for racial, moral, and national purity (Cohen, 74).”

“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin is a thought-provoking reading, it was written in the first person narrative, in which the narrator was talking about his younger brother who had a heroin addiction and had gotten into a bust. He also talks about their childhood and their mother in this narrative. The author’s writing style roused a number of reactions from me. His powerful use of rhetoric and his subtle use of social critic, I believe captures his audience.

Critics argue that the cost of putting low-ranking street corner drug dealers is disproportionate. A two-hundred dollar drug deal can turn into a big price tag for the tax payers. A report generated by the (North Carolina Department of Public Safety indicated that the cost of prison incarceration for a medium custody inmate is over thirty-thousand dollars per year. Further, the cost of substance abuse treatment conducted at a drug facility can be as high as twenty-two thousand dollars per year.

Addiction and recovery is difficult for everyone involved in the abusers life. Friends, family, and co-workers are affected by the struggle of the abuser. In “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, the story focuses on the struggle of addiction and recovery, and how his family and friends struggle to help him through his addiction. This is a serious issue in today’s society due to the psychology affect addiction has on everyone. There are many reasons a person starts to abuse drugs. The National Association for Public Health Policy states that “Drug abuse is interwoven with the problems of poverty, illiteracy, family disruption, racism, inequalities of opportunity and economic status, mental illness, and maldistribution of political power and authority” (275).

1 Support for the legalization of weed is at a record high right now. This is primarily due to the vast majority of Millennials who feel that marijuana should be legalized as a recreational drug. A few states in America have already legalized it and even more have actually decriminalized its use. David and Jack Cahn, Millennial debaters and credible authors, emphasize a pro legalization argument in their book, When Millennials Rule- The Reshaping of America. Throughout their chapter titled “The Weed Warriors are Back: Rethinking the War on Drugs” the Cahn brothers accurately illustrate that the United States drug policy has failed and predict that Millennials will strongly influence the decision to start rethinking mandatory minimums to fix the injustices they create specifically in drug related crime.

Is ‘‘Sonny’s Blues’’ optimistic or pessimistic about the possibilities of African-American Harlem society? James Baldwin’s story ‘‘Sonny’s Blues’’ is the story about a young musician from Harlem, New York, who got addicted to heroin, arrested for using and selling drugs, and returned to the childhood’s neighbourhood after his release from a prison. He moves in with his older brother, which is the narrator, and his brother’s family. The brothers reconnect after a few tense weeks during which they try to deal with the anger towards each other.

In James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues,” the readers get a glimpse into the life of an average lower-class African American man in the 1950s. The characters in the story grow up in a town called Harlem where they are given unfair opportunities. They are surrounded by a hostile environment, filled with drugs, darkness, and anger. The protagonist, the narrator, cannot overcome the oppression Harlem places on his family and on himself. The antagonist, Sonny, desperately searches for a way to escape the harsh influence of Harlem. In “Sonny’s Blues," the protagonist and the antagonist battle both internal and external conflicts as they struggle to find freedom from their negative environment.

“Sonny’s Blues” is a touching story of transformation for the narrator and his brother. After spending time in prison for possession of heroin, Sonny comes back home to meet a very hostile and unforgiving brother. The story is set in the predominately African American projects of Harlem, New York where drug abuse and violence are quite rampant. The projects according to Baldwin are: “rocks in the middle of a boiling sea” (112). This description highlights the awful state of affairs. Life conditions in Harlem are worsened by the fact that there are no opportunities for Blacks to empower themselves economically and to liberate themselves from

As with many of James Baldwin’s literature, “Sonny’s Blues” gives the reader a glimpse of the hardships that plagued the African-American community during the mid-twentieth century. Both the narrator and his brother, Sonny, are victims of the hostility of their hometown, and both try to find a means to escape that bondage. While the narrator turns to another step in the social hierarchy, Sonny pursues his own desires (Reily 58). Sonny follows the drug-ridden pattern of the stereotypical Harlem boy yet keeps his own personal dispositions through his trials.

The current policy in use by the United States concerning illegal drugs is both outdated and unfair. This so-called war on drugs is a deeply rooted campaign of prohibition and unfair sentencing that is very controversial and has been debated for many years. The war on drugs is designed so that it will never end. This current drug was has very little impact on the overall supply of prohibited drugs and its impact on demand seems non-existent. United States’ taxpayers are spending billions of dollars on this failure of policy. They are spending billions to incarcerate drug users instead offering drug treatment which could help lower demand. Legalizing illicit would lower abuse and deaths from use and could have a positive economic impact on the United States. Certain industries are making massive sums of money by capitalizing on the drug war.

Starting in 1914 the U.S introduced the first probation acts that prohibited the consumption of Opiates and Cocaine with the Harrison Narcotics act of 1914 Later this act was amended to include marijuana. This Act was the first use of federal criminal law in the United Sates to attempt to deal with the nonmedical use of drugs (wisegeek). The war of drugs started primarily in the 1971 when Nixon declared the war on drugs. He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies (Drug Policy). With the first major organized drug imports from Columbia from the Black Tuna Gang based in Miami, Florida Columbia was quickly growing into a drug superpower able to feed America’s growing addictions.

In 2009 1,663,582 people were arrested for non-violent drug charges. These people’s lives are now forever changed because of a mistake they made. This mistake is continually made every single day and Americans are being punished in extreme ways for a non violent crime. The United States needs to decimalize all drugs because the drug war is costly, causes high incarceration rates, and isn’t effective as European drug solutions.