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Revitalizing the War on Drugs
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13959 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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Date : |
2 / 1988 |
3,197 Words |
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James A. Inciardi
James A. Inciardi is professor and director of the Division of
Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. |
During the second half of 1986, it appeared that the American government might finally take its rhetorical "war on drugs" seriously. Although the number of people smoking, snorting, swallowing, or otherwise injecting themselves with one drug or another had not changed dramatically, a new variable had been introduced into the drug-use equation. 1986 was the year that the national media discovered crack cocaine. For Newsweek, crack became the biggest story since Vietnam and the fall of the Nixon presidency; other media giants compared the spread of crack with the plagues of medieval Europe. By the end of 1986, the major dailies and weekly news magazines had presented the nation with more than one thousand stories in which crack figured prominently. Not to be outdone, network television offered hundreds of reports on drug abuse, capped by CBS's 48 Hours on Crack Street, a prime-time presentation that became one of the highest-rated documentaries in the history of television.
The media had accomplished two things: First, they inflamed public concern, then claimed to be reflecting it. Indeed, as purveyors of horror stories about new flavor-of-the-month drugs, such as crack, the media had become "pushers" in their own right. Second, they instigated politicians to react to the drug problem as "politicians." Knowing that the White House was planning a late summer initiative against drugs, for example, Democrats in the House and Senate hastily drafted their own approach to the matter--an antidrug bill that at first appeared modest, but gathered some rather expensive moss as it was rolled from one committee to the next. In addition, politicians on the election beat across the nation began vaulting over one another, hoping to reach the frontlines of the antidrug parade, attempting to demonstrate how thoroughly and
... (1985 of 19696 Characters)
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