THE WAR ON DRUGS: How the criminal justice system became an institution of racial oppression and what we must do

The drug war policies kill, both through violence and neglect, harming all our communities. The drug war expands and justifies the police state and is a war on communities, especially communities of color. The drug war is the new Jim Crow -- a tool of oppression and a system of racial social control directly linked to the legacy of slavery. The drug war leads to, or contributes to, striking racial disparities in nearly every social system: while people of all classes, ethnicities and races use and sell drugs at basically the same levels, poor people and people of color are arrested and locked up much more often than the wealthy and white. The drug war uses the “criminal” label to disfranchise whole communities, restricting full civic participation. People with a conviction are pushed out in every sense: incarcerated, kicked out of school, fired from their jobs or unable to get jobs at all, uninvited from their churches, held in detention centers and deported, barred from voting, excluded from receiving financial aid, public assistance and public housing.  The drug war harms young people, who are taught junk science and abstinence-only education, while zero tolerance policies contribute to the schools-to-prison pipeline. The drug war undermines individual and cultural sovereignty, criminalizing some religious practices and personal exploration.  The drug war is tied to failed foreign policy, destabilizing sovereign governments like Mexico, providing cover for US military intervention from Columbia to Afghanistan, and is regularly tied to the war on terror and, now, the emerging war on immigrants.

The drug war is a war on people, families, and communities, and this war must end immediately.