The War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration (1980 to the Present)

HIS 217 Short Paper: Topic Proposal

Part One: Introduction

1. Historical Topic: Describe your chosen historical topic.

War on Drugs The term War on Drugs is used to refer to the federal and state policies, which were intensified during the presidency of Reagan, starting in 1980, and aimed at curtailing illegal drug use by criminalizing it and imprisoning those who use it. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 established a 100-to-1 sentencing ratio between crack and powder cocaine, leading to overrepresentation of Black and Latino Americans in prison. That population of individuals incarcerated due to drug-related offences increased to more than 450,000 by the mid-2000s, compared to 40,900 in 1980, and this has resulted in the so-called crisis of mass incarceration that is in the process of redefining American society.

2. Three Sources: Identify at least three sources related to your selected topic that you will use for your paper. At least one must be a primary source.

Source 1 (Primary): Reagan, R. (1986, September 14). Address to the nation on the campaign against drug abuse [Speech transcript]. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/address-nation-campaign-against-drug-abuse. Reagan’s televised address provides direct insight into the ideology and rhetoric used to justify punitive drug enforcement.

Source 2 (Secondary): Lurigio, A. J. (2024). The golden anniversary of mass incarceration in America. The Prison Journal, 104(3), 271–295. https://doi.org/10.1177/00328855241240131. A peer-reviewed retrospective analyzing fifty years of mass incarceration and its racial dimensions in the United States.

Source 3 (Secondary): Taifa, N. (2024). Race, mass incarceration, and the disastrous War on Drugs. In L. Eisen (Ed.), Excessive punishment: How the justice system creates mass incarceration (pp. 139–150). Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/eise21216-016. A scholarly chapter examining how racial bias has shaped drug law enforcement and incarceration policy across American history.

Part Two: Background of the Topic

1. Types of Sources: Describe the types of sources that were used to create the most common narrative surrounding the topic.

This hegemonic discourse was built by the president's speeches, reports by federal agencies, and the mainstream news media. Media reporting of the crack crisis linked drug use to Black inner cities and created fear and political legitimacy of punitive policymaking at the expense of the influence of the views of the public on health and the voice of communities who suffer.

2. Context: Describe the context of the sources you chose about your chosen topic.

In 1986, Reagan's address was given in the middle of the crack media panic and was a strategic measure towards rallying support for harsh sentencing laws. Lurigio (2024) and Taifa (2024) were authored in the context of the growing academic understanding of racial disparities, which adds to the body of literature that confronts the colorblind conceptualization of drug policy.

3. Components: Explain the components of the narrative of your topic.

The classical discourse constitutes drug use as personal moral failure, mass incarceration as the only answer to delinquency, race-blind colorblind, and, as the only answer, prisons. These elements, in combination, have the effect of naturalizing racial differences and shirking the structural accountability for such disparities.

4. Perspective: Apply a historical perspective to provide a context for your selected topic.

Racial anxieties have dominated American drug policy since opium laws were created to address Chinese immigrants and anti-marijuana attacks were directed against Mexican workers (Taifa, 2024). The heightening of the Reagan era should be interpreted in this history, and in the context of deindustrialization, mass incarceration was used to punish the structural economic issues.

5. Validity: Determine the validity of the traditional historical narrative of the topic.

Evidence contravenes the standard narrative. With decades of harsh enforcement, the drug use rates have not decreased significantly. The difference in arrest and imprisonment associated with racial disparities cannot be attributed to disparity in drug use because, according to survey data, white Americans equally consume illegal drugs but have significantly lower arrest and imprisonment rates (Lurigio, 2024). The so-called colorblind justice is empirically unsustainable.

Part Three: Deconstructing the Historical Narrative

1. Credibility: Determine the credibility of the sources you selected for your chosen topic.

The speech by Reagan is very credible, given that it is an official government document that brings out the ideology of punitive drug policy. The Prison Journal article by Lurigio (2024) is a peer-reviewed, empirically based historical analysis. Taifa (2024) is an academic book chapter published by Columbia University Press, based on decades of legal and policy research.

2. Bias: Describe potential bias in your selected sources for your chosen topic.

Reagan's speech is political in nature, without addressing public health or racial inequalities. The stories by Lurigio (2024) and Taifa (2024) are critical scholarly narratives; they have a solid evidentiary basis, but both writers are driven by theses that predict racial injustice, which readers should be aware of when assessing their interpretations.

3. Power Structures: Identify the power structures that influence the development of the historical narrative surrounding your chosen topic.

The drugs were defined as criminal as opposed to a health issue in the country; the media enhanced racially coded pictures of the crack epidemic; prison corporations gained financial gains in the increased incarceration; and mandatory minimums eliminated judicial discretion. These overlapping structures combined to seem to be the one way to mass incarceration.

4. Variations: Explain why there are variations in the narrative of the event presented by your selected sources.

The speech by Reagan and the academic sources present contrasting narratives: the former inquire about the effectiveness of enforcement in reducing drug use, whereas the latter inquire about those who finance it. Using outcome data unavailable to contemporaries, Lurigio (2024) and Taifa (2024) conduct retrospective analyses that dispute initial reasoning.

5. Information Gaps: Explain why information gaps occur in the sources you selected for your chosen topic.

There are intentional omissions in the speech of Reagan: he does not mention any racial inequality or the reduction of drug usage rates. The official documents, as well as the academic literature, do not actually include the first-hand opinions of incarcerated people, the group most impacted by these policies.

Part Four: Changing the Narrative of History

1. Role of Historical Context: Discuss the impact of historical context on your topic.

The War on Drugs cannot be detached from the welfare cuts and de-industrialization of the Reagan era, which undermined the Black urban communities. Mass incarceration was a political decision, which included economic consequences to be met out by punishment instead of investment. According to Lurigio (2024), this tendency towards control in a racialized manner is rooted in the deep structure of American history.

2. Role of Diverse Perspectives: Explain the importance of diverse perspectives in the interpretation of this topic.

The prevailing discourse did not incorporate the voices of the communities most negatively impacted by enforcement. As Taifa (2024) shows, adding the voices of former prisoners and civil rights experts helps realize that the War on Drugs is a racially-focused campaign, and it does alter the interpretation of its costs and effects radically.

3. Role of Bias: Describe the role of bias in the historical interpretation of this topic.

The War on Drugs was influenced on every level by racial bias: the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity, the use of race during enforcement, how the media were used to portray crack users as a menace, and writing history in a manner that gave priority to official sources. These layers are important to realize the long-term effects of mass incarceration.

4. Cultural Norms and Values: Explain how cultural norms and values impact the interpretation of this topic.

Individual responsibility and cultural ideas of colorblindness made a punitive approach to drugs widely acceptable, and it became possible to blame racial inequality on individual conduct. Conversely, the community ethics in directly impacted districts have yielded resistance movements that have spearheaded criminal justice reform.

5. Connections: Explain the connection between your historical topic and current events.

The War on Drugs relates to the present directly. Black Americans are still arrested more often due to possession of marijuana than white Americans, even though they have equal rates of its use (American Civil Liberties Union, 2020). The treatment-based policy response to the opioid crisis demonstrated a vivid, two-sided difference from the first policy response of crack cocaine enforcement. The adoption of reforms like the First Step Act of 2018 itself is indicative of the increased awareness that the War on Drugs did not work and caused massive racial injustice.

References

Lurigio, A. J. (2024). The golden anniversary of mass incarceration in America. The Prison Journal, 104(3), 271–295. https://doi.org/10.1177/00328855241240131

American Civil Liberties Union. (2020). A tale of two countries: Racially targeted arrests in the era of marijuana reform. https://www.aclu.org/report/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform

Taifa, N. (2024). Race, mass incarceration, and the disastrous War on Drugs. In L. Eisen (Ed.), Excessive punishment: How the justice system creates mass incarceration (pp. 139–150). Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/eise21216-016

Reagan, R. (1986, September 14). Address to the nation on the campaign against drug abuse [Speech transcript]. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/address-nation-campaign-against-drug-abuse