The Ronald Reagan Administration

After getting the public support for his campaign, America saw an unprecedented rise in its incarceration rate, particularly among African Americans. The “ War on Drugs ” has had a disparate impact on the black community even though blacks and whites use drugs at approximately the same levels. This is achieved through a myriad of formal and informal practices. African-Americans are targeted and prosecuted at a much higher rate even though they are not statistically any likelier to abuse or sell drugs than the white population.

President Nixon first declared the “war on drugs” on June of 1971. This came after heavy drug use during the 1960s. New York in particular, had a rise in heroin use. After Nixon’s declaration, states began decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana and other drugs. Many small drug offences led to a mandatory fifteen years to life. This Drug War has led to an increase of incarceration rates since. One of the earliest laws that followed Nixon’s announcement were the Rockefeller Drug Laws that to not only failed to deter crime but also lead to other problems in the criminal justice system. With the Rockefeller Drug Laws came heavy racial disparity of those incarcerated for drug related crimes. Although the Obama Administration has begun reforms, the new President Elect Trump’s views may bring all the efforts back down.

Ronald Reagan was not only a master of foreign policy, but was also skillful with his domestic policy as well, such as his handling of illegal drug use within the United States. Reagan began his administration’s “war on drugs” in October 1982 (Glass). On that date he declared that illegal drugs and their production and transportation were hurting America (Glass). From then on, he made it clear that his administration would act against illegal drugs, and would do what it could to stop their influence. Congress, Reagan’s Vice President George H.W. Bush, and even his wife all put forth great contributions to the fight against illegal drugs. Ronald Reagan began to take action of his own in September 1986 when he helped to put forth and effectively pass Executive Order 12564 (Drug-Free Federal Workplace). The order was intended to create a drug-free work environment for every worker in America, and made it the law to not use drugs while at a workplace (Drug-Free Federal Workplace). Also, he signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 into law (Anti-Drug Abuse Act). The Anti-Drug Abuse Act created different types of minor and major penalties for drug offenses, and also created the

In the 1970s, President Nixon declared a war on drugs. The War on Drugs is a government movement aiming toward a prohibition of illegal drugs. Nixon dramatically increased drug control agencies, and reinforced the mandatory sentence. He placed the crime in the most restrictive category of drugs. The original budget for waging this war was one trillion dollars. In October of 1982, President Ronald Reagan declared a war on drugs. It marked the beginning of a long period of incarceration. Reagan increased anti-drug spending and increased the number of federal drug enforcement. During his campaign, he integrated the dog whistle strategy to discriminate against the African Americans. Since there was a mass incarceration of African Americans

To start, a little history behind the drug war. During Nixon’s campaign in 1968 and his presidency thereafter, there were two threats to Nixon at the time. One was the anti-war leftists and the other was black people. The reason is, during the war with Vietnam, the anti-war leftists, or also known as the hippies, would protest often in Washington.

Throughout history, the drug war has always targeted minority groups. “At the root of the drug-prohibition movement in the United States is race, which is the driving force behind the first laws criminalizing drug use, which first appeared as early as the 1870s (Cohen, 56)”. There were many drug laws that targeted minority groups such as the marijuana ban of 1930s that criminalized Mexican migrant farm workers and in the Jim Crow South, reformist wanted to wage war on the Negro cocaine feign so they used African Americans as a scapegoat while they overlooked southern white women who were a bigger problem for the drug epidemic (Cohen, 57). Instead of tackling the root of the drug problem they passed the blame to struggling minority groups within the United States.

American people identified the War on Drugs was launched to combat the crack crisis. However, Alexander claims that the crack crisis emerged some years after the War on Drugs was launched. She argues that negative racial stereotypes surrounding the crack crisis were widely dispersed on media. Reagan administration intensified a campaign to gain public and legislative support to the drug war in 1985. Suddenly media was saturated with images of black “crack whores” “crack dealers” and “crack babies” (p.5). There was a widespread discourse that crack crisis was a problem of the poor black neighborhoods. Thus, it was created and constantly reinforced the idea that African American people are drug addicts and dangerous. It is not surprising to know white people that is scared of black people. Moreover, in case you argue to someone that is scared of black people that s/he is being racist, they will claim that statistics prove that many African American are in prison due to drug issues.

Thesis Statement: Ronald Reagan’s presidency was one of the most successful in United States history because he revitalized the failing economy, used his remarkable communication skills to reestablish America’s lost morale, and even played a vital role in ending the Cold War.

A good place to begin would be in regards to Reagan’s administration and his communication with said administrators or better the lack thereof. President Reagan’s style of administration was regarded as a ‘hands off’ approach in which left him out of a lot the specifics in decision making other than just making the decision of yes or no to a certain degree. The reliance on his administration to make most of the decisions for him ended up creating some issues small and major such as the Iran-Contra scandal. Reagans un

She argues that when President Reagan officially announced the War on Drugs, less than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue of the nation. Crack began to spread within the black community two years after

The War on Drugs began in increments, first with President Nixon and secondly with President Reagan (Hill, Oliver, Marion, 2012). While under the Nixon administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration was developed due to the thought of how drugs can affect an individual as well as a community. Drugs did not only affect the user and the community, but also the families as well as children. Out of all the presidents, it is documented that President Nixon was one who had discussions about drugs more than any other president (Hill, et al., 2012).

In the late 1960's and early 1970's, the federal government began to increasingly tighten drug laws. In 1972, President Richard Nixon formally declared a "War on Drugs", which continues

What we must do in this debate is set the agenda that will beat Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan was born on February 6, 1911 in Tampico, Illinois (Huckshorn 1). He was born in a small apartment above the Pitney General Store (Life Before 1). John Edward Reagan (his father) was a shoe salesman that was an alcoholic. The first time he saw his son he said, "For such a little bit of a fat Dutchman, he makes a hell of a lot of noise, doesn 't he" (Life Before 1). This led to his nickname, "Dutch."

In the 1980s, the criticizers of the American criminal-justice system complained that the penalties for possession of crack cocaine were far more severe than the penalties for possession of powder cocaine. Powder cocaine users were typically white, while Crack cocaine overpowered urban black communities in America. The federal government wanted to cleanup the problem by ordering severe prison sentences for those people