First the media beats the drum of, the drug war is evil, the drug war is costing us millions, the drug war is ineffective, people need treatment not incarceration..they've been running this campaign for years.
Now that people are waking up to this fact, we're going to chalk it up to plain old racism.
Give me a break.
Racism was a significant component of the drug war from the beginning. The article doesn't seek to "chalk it up to plain old racism", rather the article seeks to shed light on some of the racial aspects of policy making.
Overall drug consumers have always trended white. Police resources are focused on sales, which happens in cities. Retail drug operations are designed around the laws, so the retail frontline people get swept up as users (because they carry small quantities), which impacts minority users harder.
http://i.imgur.com/NkyayV0.jpg
The country was (more) racist back then, but we can't forget that the Black community was the first anti-drug community. Harsh drug laws were just how things were done back then.
This quote from the article illustrates its assumptions.
"But today, with heroin ravaging largely white communities in New England, the Northeast and the Midwest, and with violent crime largely down, the mood is more forgiving."
Wow, that escalated fast.
The decades of brutality against the poor and racial minorities before that triggered no such reaction and was applauded by many.