Most high schools teach that drugs are bad, but Jay Z thinks that the War on Drugs just might be worse — an “epic fail” even. In his new op-ed video for The New York Times, Jay Z and artist Molly Crabapple give us a window into the history of the War on Drugs from its beginnings under President Richard Nixon in 1971 to today.
During the short film, Crabapple sketches artwork of buildings being boarded up, prisoners, and green, leafy marijuana plants while Jay Z paints a portrait with words of how our society has demonized drugs and their users — more specifically their black users.
“The War on Drugs exploded the U.S. prison population, disproportionately locking away black and Latinos,” Jay Z narrates. He also notes that police issue possession citations in black and Latino neighborhoods at a higher rate than in other neighborhoods, saying that students at Colombia University are far less likely to be ticketed than teens who lived in Brooklyn's Crown Heights.
Jay Z explains that drugs and their dealers were blamed for the downfall of inner city communities and that today the United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world, partially because of drug-related charges. He riffs off eye-opening facts about how mandatory minimum prison sentences disproportionally affect blacks and Latinos, and notes that racism folded into the way drug laws were written and enforced.
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Later on in the video, Jay Z acknowledges that some strides have been made as far as talking about how harder drugs such as crack affect our community: “People are finally talking about treating addiction to harder drugs as a health crisis, but there is no compassionate language about drug dealers.”
He emphasizes that legalization efforts in states like Colorado and Oregon have been polluted by faulty policies of the past and venture capitalism.
The rapper wraps up his argument saying that rates of drug use are just as high as they were when Nixon declared the war on drugs in the early ‘70s. In other words, for all of our government's efforts no real change has come about.
"Forty-five years later, it's time to rethink our policy and laws. The War on Drugs is an epic fail."
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