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Comment by singhrac | Hacker News Reader

I'm afraid I don't understand your comment. I think you're trying to say that it wasn't just racism that caused the war on drugs (and in particular on marijuana). But I do think the quote in the parent comment makes it pretty clear that the Nixon administration engineered the war on drugs in order to incarcerate black people (for political power, not necessarily racism, though the two are very difficult to divide here).

"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

The linked article quotes the head of the proto-DEA making an extremely racist comment showing the reasons why he attacked marijuana. I think the specific targeting of drugs used by the black community (marijuana and crack were and are significantly more prosecuted than opioids and heroin) gives this weight above a conspiracy theory.

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If it was black who were incarcerated the most because of drug laws, it doesn’t make it racist.

Moreover, even if you know upfront that black people will be incarcerated the most because of drug laws, it doesn’t make that war racist.

(Moreover the quote in the linked article clearly states that hippies were also the target of the war on drugs, which, even if the quotes are correct and not taken out of context etc., make this war at least not fully racist.)

If we of course use the dictionary definition of the word racism, not extremely wide interpretation used today.

Some people were racists of course. But most people just thought harsher law on drugs would make communities safer. And most government actors just wanted more power regardless of who is going to get in jail.

It is much much more complicated issue than (quoting the comment I replied to) “Straight facts, it was all about the racism”.

Cannabis was named "marijuana" by American newspapers for the express purpose of associating it with Mexican immigrants. The criminalisation of cannabis was started by racism, and has been solely for the purpose of racism ever since. How else can you explain demonising a mostly harmless plant without any evidence?

They call it both cannabis and marijuana here too and yet it is not associated with blacks nor mexicans. Countries without a significant black or latin american population have the same laws, I think that you have an american-centric view regarding this topic.

What they said is a well documented part of American history, so it is an American centric view but also true. If you're curious, read about Harry Anslinger for a start.

>Countries without a significant black or latin american population have the same laws

There are international laws stating marijuana should be legal for medicinal use only, which the US is largely responsible for. Countries that don't want to piss off the US have little choice.

But the topic is about drug laws in America. America had centuries of race-based slavery, significant political fighting and wars based on protecting race-based enslavement, and after said enslavement was banned a further generation(or two) of institutionalized separation of services based on race. In America there are people alive who at one point were unable to participate in the democratic political system because of their race.

America is unique in that their culture has only fairly recently outlawed explicitly, institutionally treating people of other races as lesser than whites, as a result of longstanding cultural traditions and norms to justify centuries of have race-based slavery. (The only way you can have massive slavery of a specific race of people in a society and have that society not view it as a complete aberration is if they somehow normalize and justify it to themselves.)

In this context of a country has had, until very recently, explicitly government sanctioned discrimination on the bases of race, it makes sense that even though explicit discrimination is no longer allowed laws may still be passed that are designed to implicitly be government sanctioned discrimination on the basis of race.

The point is that said laws exist in most of the world, so the racism explanation does not make sense by itself (if https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26046553 is true however it would make sense)

> America is unique in that their culture has only fairly recently outlawed explicitly, institutionally treating people of other races as lesser than whites

USA is far from unique in that regard, certain commonwealth countries have the same issue.

> Cannabis was named "marijuana" by American newspapers for the express purpose of associating it with Mexican immigrants

Again, this is just silly. This is finding connections where there are none.

Drug users rarely use medical terms for the drugs.

The use coke for cocaine, molly for MDMA, crystal for methamphetamine, and marijuana for certain forms of cannabis.

It's people who sell drugs, and drug users give the names for them. Not newspapers.

> The criminalisation of cannabis was started by racism

Original commenter posted a link explaining cannabis was banned because of fight with hippies. It had nothing to do with race. But even that is very far fetched: all drugs were criminalized over time.

Cannabis extract was actively sold in the US under that name with no issue. Then Anslinger connected it to the word "marijuana" to leverage racism against Hispanics

I think you’re projecting and trying to defend your ego against supporting racist policy, because you’re not racist so how can the war on drugs be?

Please tell me how harsher sentencing on crack cocaine compared to cocaine is not the dictionary definition of racism. It sorts one group out from another (statistically crack cocaine is used more by black people), which is discrimination, and then punishes those people, racism.

The good thing is instead of trying to mind-bend your way around supporting a racist policy, you can just change your opinion free of charge.

> Please tell me how harsher sentencing on crack cocaine compared to cocaine is not the dictionary definition of racism. > statistically crack cocaine is used more by black people

Again, if some action has different effect on racism, it does not make it inherently racist.

Wikipedia quotes original reasoning: crack cocaine is way more dangerous than powder cocaine.

Let me give another example. Illegal possession of a firearm is more often applied to black people. But that policy is not racist.

> The good thing is instead of trying to mind-bend your way around supporting a racist policy

Note, I do not support this policy.

I'm arguing the policy itself (regardless of whether it is good or bad) is not racist.

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