There are four aspects of America’s War on Drugs that every American needs to appreciate. First, to combat drug cartels, Congress empowered the Department of Justice through the creation of mandatory-minimum sentences to end the careers of committed drug dealers. Second, the mandatory-minimum sentences were intended to be used against drug “kingpins” the people at the upper echelons of large trafficking organizations, who make the most money, wield the most power and inflict the greatest violence and destruction. Third, the “war” has had a profound effect on young black and Hispanic men, who are sentenced to mandatory-minimum terms at disproportionate rates. Fourth, the reason is not because there are more black and Hispanic drug “kingpins” than other racial groups it is at least in large part because the mandatory-minimum sentences are used against even low-level members of identified trafficking groups in a way never intended by Congress. Many of those large street-level operations, which tend to be local and easy to prosecute, include legions of young “street hustlers,” who turn to trafficking to support their own drug addiction.
I support the war on drugs. Indeed, I can fairly be called a hawk. I spent most of my nearly nine-year career as a federal prosecutor attacking (largely white and Asian) drug-trafficking organizations and putting their members behind bars for long stretches. For every wide-eyed, liberal, young lawyer I meet who naïvely criticizes the wisdom and resources this “war” has entailed, I issue the same challenge: Read the daily papers and keep track of drug-related murders, assaults, robberies, break-ins and general violence for six months and then explain to me why drug enforcement should not be one of our top enforcement priorities.
AN ISSUE OF FAIRNESS
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