BLACK HEALTH MATTERS

The Racist Crack Pipe Scandal Shows Why America Lost The War on Drugs

Racism, poor policies, and bad faith talking points keep controlling the narrative

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Conservative faux outrage strikes again. This time, they claim President Biden will soon be sending crackpipes through the mail and, according to Senator Marco Rubio, "targeting minority communities." But let's get real —Rubio is lying about the policy and clearly doesn't care about the Black community. Unfortunately, conservatives keep choosing to stir the pot rather than address America's lost war on drugs and our path forward.

America spent over a trillion dollars which has not decreased drug usage or addiction. And the more we use unscientific strategies to handle public health crises, the longer these bad-faith policies will harm minority communities. According to John Hudak, deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management, the "War on Drugs has been widely successful in one specific area: institutionalizing racism."

Local, state, and federal law enforcement has used the "war on drugs" to disproportionately target Black communities using broken-window tactics. And once arrested for possession of drugs, the system provides unequal sentencing. For instance, the…