The war on drugs is a war on people

Inmate from the documentary "The House I Live In" The War on Drugs, a label we inherited from Richard Nixon, is a lie. It is simply a war on people, and has had the most dire effect on people of color, whether inside the borders of the U.S, or as a part of destabilizing military interventions in other countries.

If you have not yet watched the documentary film The House I Live In, it is a must see. It was the winner of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize'Documentary.

Eugene Jarecki's seminal film Why We Fight dissected the underbelly of the American war machine. Now, with scalpel-like precision, Jarecki turns his lens on a less visible war'one that is costing more lives, destroying more families, and quickly becoming a scourge on the soul of American society. In the past 40 years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world's largest jailer, and destroyed impoverished communities at home and abroad. Yet drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available today than ever. Where did we go wrong, and what can be done?

Clearly no one film, or even series of films, can cover the depredations of the drug war, nor all of the history, and current multi-varied facets, but this is a good starting point for raising some of the issues.

It is impossible to write one comprehensive piece delineating all of the aspects of this war which include:  

Incarceration
Criminalization
Decriminalization
Unequal sentencing
Legalization
Public Heath (including HIV/AIDS and Hep C)
Drug Treatment
Harm reduction (including syringe exchange and safe injection spaces)
Moral/religious stigma surrounding drug use
Racism and white privilege
Use of police and the military, including US interventions
Drug trafficking
Agriculture (including hemp, coca and opium poppy cultivation)
Economic impact, costs
Money laundering, Wall Street
Crime
Gun control and gangs
Elected officials and elections'"tough on crime"

My own perspective for over 25 years has been primarily one from a medical anthropology focus'looking at the topic of drugs as a public health concern.

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