War on drugs
War on Drugs¶
Bad Legislation¶
Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act¶
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_State_Narcotic_Drug_Act
Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970¶
- Controlled Substances Act (CSA)
- establishing federal U.S. drug policy under which the manufacture, importation, possession, use, and distribution of certain substances is regulated.
- signed into law by President Richard Nixon
Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984¶
- Co-Authored by Joe Biden & Strom Thurmond (Republican chairman of South Carolina)
- The new law increased the penalty for possession of marijuana and established mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes
- https://www.congress.gov/bill/98th-congress/senate-bill/1762/cosponsors
- signed into law by President Ronald Reagan
1986 Anti–Drug Abuse Act¶
- Co-Authored by Joe Biden & Strom Thurmond (Republican chairman of South Carolina)
- law stiffened drug crime penalties and mandated notoriously disparate sentencing for the possession of crack, associated with Black users, and powder cocaine, more popular with affluent whites: Possession of either five grams of crack or five hundred grams of powder cocaine carried a minimum of five years in prison.
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994)¶
- sometimes referred to as the Biden Crime Bill
- successfully shepherded by Biden
- leaned heavily on Tom Scotto, president of the National Association of Police Organizations, the nation’s second-largest coalition of law enforcement unions
- aka 1994 crime bill
- increased funding for police
- The law contributed to both declining crime rates and the rise of mass incarceration