The idea of the arguments in the article is that the drug war unfairly targeted American blacks and did so deliberately. By criminalizing small amounts of canna

The idea of the arguments in the article is that the drug war unfairly targeted American blacks and did so deliberately. By criminalizing small amounts of cannabis--the use of which has been deeply part of American black culture since especially the jazz age--and introducing mandatory minimum sentences, the drug was was able to effectively target blacks and latins (and hippies), and basically take them out of social circulation and put them into prison and crime circulation. Probably being incarcerated for a minor drug offense then co-occurred with being more likely to be incarcerated for a violent offense later on. Basically a whole lost generation that became segregated from participating in normal society and could only really participate in prison or in an underground or crime economy. Watching the Netflix documentary Grass is Greener I was shocked how clearly racist these policies were. It seems like Nixon and Reagan (and the original cannabis prohibitionist Alsinger) were deliberately targeting blacks and latins and knew they were doing this. It's pretty sad. I wonder how America can reconcile this karmic ethnic history...