The War on Drugs wasn’t about protecting people. It wasn’t about stopping addiction. It was never even really about drugs. It was about control—about keeping Black and Brown communities trapped in cycles of poverty, incarceration, and destruction while pretending it was about law and order. The system didn’t just criminalize drug use; it ensured that drugs made it into our neighborhoods, knowing exactly what would happen next. The devastation didn’t come by accident—it was planned. But here’s the part people don’t like to talk about: our people played a role in it too. They didn’t fully understand the scale of the trap being set, but they participated in a system that paid them in fast money while taking everything else from them in return.
It started at the top, with a government that deliberately put drugs in our communities while pretending to fight a war against them. In the 1980s, during the height of Ronald Reagan’s anti-drug crusade, his administration was secretly allowing cocaine to be smuggled into the U.S. to fund illegal wars in Latin America. The Iran-Contra scandal revealed that the CIA was working with drug traffickers, funneling massive amounts of cocaine into the country, which then found its way into Black neighborhoods. But the plan didn’t stop there. Once the drugs were in circulation, the government stepped back and let the destruction happen, only intervening to punish, imprison, and profit from the chaos they had created.
Once crack cocaine hit the streets, it spread like wildfire. But we have to understand something—our people didn’t see it as a weapon at first. They saw it as survival. For young Black men in the 80s and 90s, options were limited. Jobs were scarce. Schools were underfunded. Opportunities were practically nonexistent. Then suddenly, here was a product that could turn someone from broke to a boss overnight. The drug game looked like a way out, a way up, a way to finally have something of their own. The same system that had denied them legal opportunities was now offering them an illegal one, and many took it—without realizing the long-term cost.
While dealers made money, addicts suffered. But the people who became users weren’t thinking about addiction at first, either. Many of them were just trying to escape the daily struggles of poverty and stress. Crack wasn’t just another drug—it was engineered for destruction, highly addictive, and designed to keep people coming back. With no real rehabilitation programs, no government intervention to provide treatment, and no second chances, once people got hooked, their fate was practically sealed. Families broke apart. Communities became unrecognizable. The neighborhoods that had once been filled with life and culture turned into battlefields, where brothers killed brothers over drug turf that none of them truly owned.
But the worst part? When the damage was done, when the prisons were filled, and the funerals were held, the government that brought the drugs in turned around and blamed us for it. They introduced mandatory minimum sentences in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, making sure that crack users and sellers—who were mostly Black—were punished far more harshly than powder cocaine offenders, who were mostly white. A 100:1 sentencing disparity ensured that a Black person caught with a small amount of crack would serve more time than a white person caught with a large amount of powder cocaine. And just like that, entire generations of Black men were wiped out—not by drugs alone, but by the prison system that had been waiting for them all along.
The effects of that era didn’t just disappear—they’re still here today. Many of us grew up in the aftermath, watching parents, uncles, and older cousins battle addiction, incarceration, and trauma that never fully healed. And while the crack epidemic faded, it only made room for a new drug crisis—fentanyl. This time, the war isn’t just against poor Black communities but against all struggling communities, regardless of race. Fentanyl is more deadly than crack ever was, claiming thousands of lives at an alarming rate. And just like before, the system isn’t offering real solutions—it’s offering punishment, judgment, and neglect.
Meanwhile, our youth are being set up to repeat the same cycle. The drug game still looks like the only way out for many kids today. Social media glorifies the lifestyle, just like rap music and movies did in the 90s. Schools are still underfunded, jobs are still scarce, and the government still isn’t offering real opportunities. The only difference now is that instead of crack and heroin, it’s prescription opioids, fake pills laced with fentanyl, and other synthetic drugs that are tearing communities apart.
So, where do we go from here? How do we break the cycle? It starts with telling the truth. We need to stop glorifying the people who helped destroy us, even if they didn’t fully understand what they were a part of.
We need to demand justice for those still sitting in prison for drug charges, while wealthy dispensary owners legally sell the same product that got our people locked up. We need to invest in real solutions for our youth, offering them education, business opportunities, and resources that actually give them a future. And most importantly, we need to hold the system accountable—because they did this to us, and they owe us more than apologies. They owe us reparations, reinvestment, and real change.
The War on Drugs was never just about drugs. It was about power, control, and destruction. But if we recognize the game, we don’t have to keep playing it. It’s time to change the story.
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War on Drugs, crack epidemic, mass incarceration, Black communities, CIA drug trafficking, fentanyl crisis, drug war history, systemic oppression, prison industrial complex, drug policy reform, Reagan drug laws, 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, Iran-Contra scandal, mandatory minimums, generational trauma, street economy, urban drug trade, Black wealth destruction, community impact, justice reform, addiction crisis, youth and drugs, fentanyl epidemic, drug sentencing disparity.
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