rs outnumber blacks by 5 to 1, and blacks only make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, over 62 percent of prisoners incarcerated for drug related charges are black. (ABC) This alarming statistic shows the blatant racism of the “War on Drugs”, which is more a war on blacks than drugs.Between the years of 1970 and 1998, over 11.5 million people were incarcerated for acts ranging from simple possession of Marijuana, to sale and manufacture of Marijuana – a category that encompasses all charges related to growing, distribution, and cultivation. 87 percent of all arrests were for possession, while 13 percent of arrests were for sale/manufacture. (NORML)Our prisons are so overcrowded that approximately 24 states are under Federal orders to set some prisoners free. There are over 1.5 million people in Federal, State, and local correctional facilities at the time of this paper’s writing. Yet, the War on Drugs continues, and if its “ultimate goal” is reached – the incarceration of every drug user, dealer, and grower, there will be approximately 30 million more people in our prisons. This is more people than the combined populations of California, Arizona, and New Mexico. To incarcerate every drug user in the country, we would have to spend over 15 trillion dollars, a figure that would not only bankrupt the country and destroy the working force, but would also leave no money to run the prisons that we worked so hard to fill. (Schaffer sec.7)So why, you may ask, is this country seemingly obsessed with clearing the streets of our “violent”, “degenerate” Marijuana users? The answer is simple. If you tell a horse over and over that it is a donkey, eventually the horse will believe it. The amount of propaganda that has been flooding the country for all these years, misinformation from top government officials, and blatant lies from our country’s health “expertsR...
