NewsOne – Being a college student at the time, I clearly remember when Nancy Reagan and the conservative wave in national government helped usher in the nation’s War on Drugs in the 1980s.
Television news images of drug busts, large and small, along with the wholesale arrests and stiffer sentencing for anyone even suspected of drug involvement sent a clear message that government intended to empty the streets and fill the prisons until drugs were no more.
But subversives like me and my Rutgers University cohorts viewed the so-called war as a heavy-handed, law-enforcement driven, prison complex-building effort to harass, arrest, and ultimately mark for life two groups of people: those who did small amounts of recreational drugs and were generally no threat to society and those with serious drug dependencies who needed a good rehab program instead of a jail cell.
It may have taken 30 years to prove, but it seems we were on the right track way back when: on Wednesday, the White House announced a new direction in the War on Drugs, where stopping drug use before it starts and treating drug addition as a health issue will now be priorities.
“Drug policy should be rooted in neuroscience, not political science,” said Gil Kerikowske, director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy.
With NewsOne in attendance, Kerikowske said in a conference call that while law enforcement will still play a role in overall national drug policy, evidence-based public health and safety approaches aimed at reducing drug use will also be employed.
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