In Depth
Everything Old Is New Again
Policymakers claim to have turned away from the “old” war on drugs—but everything about their “new” approach is still focused on punishment and surveillance.
war on drugs
15 posts in ‘war on drugs’
Beginnings
When Treatment First Met the Prison
During the mid-twentieth century, the Bureau of Prisons ran two “narcotic farms” that muddled medical care with incarceration, part of a growing trend that criminalized addiction.
public health
Surviving Abstinence
Abstinence-only drug treatment doesn’t work. For people in prison, where drugs flow freely, such programs simply place them at greater risk of relapse.
public health
The Prescription Police
Placing criminal system tools in health-care providers’ hands causes irreparable damage to patient care and public trust.
excerpt
Dare to Report
The D.A.R.E. program turned students into snitches, leading to the arrest and incarceration of friends and loved ones who used drugs.
advocacy
Philly’s Safe Consumption Fight
Public skepticism about scientific research, coupled with echoes of the war on drugs, have hindered our city’s ability to respond to our overdose crisis.
interventions
Papers, Please
Reparations for historic wrongs require concrete action, and that's no different for the untold harm caused by cannabis criminalization.
public history
The Suburban Drug War
How white, middle-class youth in the suburbs experienced the war on drugs is a largely untold chapter in the arc of mass incarceration.
public health
The Essentialism of Addiction
We must challenge the dominant carceral narrative that one is born an addict and a criminal—rather than constructed as one by those in power.
public health
The Pain of Punishment
Criminalizing pain medicine has led patients to despair while the carceral state forces their medical decisions. But it has also opened avenues for solidarity between pain sufferers and incarcerated people.
democracy & power
Culture Wars and Criminalization
Absent a sustained politics of solidarity, culture wars will continue to erode civil rights while criminalizing, surveilling, and punishing those who claim them
In Depth
Hidden Transcripts
The Reagan administration’s entrenchment of a retaliatory immigration detention regime sowed seeds of resistance that persist to this day.
Institutions
A Veneer of Benevolence
For many years, I believed that the child welfare system could be reformed, but no more. It needs to be abolished.
public health
Drug-Induced Panic
Criminalization of so-called drug-induced homicides is yet another manifestation of the failed war on drugs — and far from an adequate public health response.
Crimmigration
The Border State
Our nation’s turn toward punitiveness for people arriving at the Southwest border coincided with the modern era of mass incarceration.