Reflecting on the Latest Drug War Fronts

Abstract

A criminal justice response to drug use in the United States has a long and dynamic history, and many advocates for significant reform of current drugs laws reasonably suggest that today's criminal laws are comparable to alcohol Prohibition a century ago. The modern era of federal drug prohibition arguably began when President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s first embraced war metaphors and rhetoric to describe and justify domestic policies to combat drug use and abuse. Despite persistent concerns and criticisms about the tone and tactics used in the so-called war on drugs, Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and William Clinton all continued, and often escalated, the national drug war campaign through repeated emphasis on social problems created by drug use and through persistent support for extensive criminal justice responses to these problems. The most tangible and consequential federal facets of the modern drug war find expression in the modern federal sentencing structure for drug crimes. Congress greatly increased the criminal penalties for drug trafficking through the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and subsequent legislation; these statutes created severe mandatory minimum drug sentences triggered by the quantity of drugs involved in an offense, and the U.S. Sentencing Commission has built even more severe guideline sentencing provi- sions atop these statutory minimum prison terms. As a result of these statutory and guideline provi- sions, the average prison term for every federal drug crime, as well as the total number of federal prisoners incarcerated for drug offenses, increased dramatically. By at the start of the 21st century, after decades of drug war rhetoric and lengthened prison terms for drug offenses, local and national politicians starting voicing some of the social and economic concerns