The Jiggaman criticizes how drug laws were written and enforced in the U.S., claiming that they target Black and Latino people.
- Sep 15, 2016
AceShowbiz - Jay-Z narrates a short animated film for New York Times to expose problems with the American war on drugs. In the op-ed video called "A History on the War of Drugs: From Prohibition to the Gold Rush" featuring illustrations by artist Molly Crabapple, the rapper calls the war an "epic fail" that singled out Black and Latino people.
"In 1986, when I was coming of age, Ronald Reagan doubled down on the war on drugs that had been started by Richard Nixon in 1971," he says. "Drugs were bad, fried your brain and drug dealers were monsters -- the sole reason neighborhoods and major cities were failing."
"No one wanted to talk about Reaganomics and the ending of social safety nets. The defunding of schools and the loss of jobs in cities across America. Young men like me who hustled became the sole villain and drug addicts lacked moral fortitude."
"In the 1990s, incarceration rates in the U.S. blew up. Today, we imprison more people than any other country in the world: China, Russia, Iran, Cuba - all countries we consider autocratic and oppressive," he continues. "Judges' hands were tied by 'tough on crime' laws and they were forced to hand out mandatory life sentences for simple possession and low-level drug sales."
"Then the Feds made distinctions between people who sold powder cocaine and crack cocaine - even though they were the same drug. Only difference is how you take it," Jay Z adds. "And even though white people used and sold crack more than black people, somehow it was black people who went to prison. The media ignored actual data. To this day, crack is still talked about as a black problem."
"The NYPD raided our Brooklyn neighborhoods while Manhattan bankers openly used coke with impunity," he says. "Long after the crack era ended, we continued our war on drugs. There were more than 1.5 million drug arrests in 2014. More than 80|percent| were for possession only. Almost half were for marijuana."
"People are finally talking about treating addiction to harder drugs as a health crisis, but there's no compassionate language about drug dealers, unless, of course, we're talking about places like Colorado, whose state economy got a huge boost by the above-ground marijuana industry. A few states south in Louisiana, they're still handing out mandatory sentences to people who sell weed. Despite a booming and celebrated $50 billion legal marijuana industry, most states still disproportionately hand out mandatory sentences to Black and Latinos with drug cases."
"If you're entrepreneurial and live in one of the many states that are passing legalized laws, you may still face barriers participating in the above-ground economy. Venture capitalists migrate to these states to open multi-billion dollar operations but former felons can't open a dispensary. Lots of times, those felonies were drug charges, caught by poor people who sold drugs for a living but are now prohibited in one of the fastest growing economies. Got it?"
"In states like New York where holding marijuana is no longer grounds for arrest, police issue possession citations in Black and Latino neighborhoods at a far higher rate than other neighborhoods," Jay-Z says. "Kids in Crown Heights are constantly stopped and ticketed for trees. Kids at dorms in Columbia, where rates of marijuana use are equal to or worse than those in the hood, are never targeted or ticketed."
"Rates of drug use are as high as they were when Nixon declared this so-called war in 1971," he concludes. "Forty-five years later, it's time to rethink our policies and laws. The war on drugs is an epic fail."
