Sunday, March 6, 2016

The Disastrous Legacy Of Nancy Reagan’s ‘Just Say No’ Campaign


Aviva Shen writes:
In what is perhaps Nancy Reagan’s most well-known cultural contribution, the First Lady stared gravely into the camera and told the American people to “Just Say No.” “Our job is never easy because drug criminals are ingenious,” she said in the 1984 address. “They work everyday to plot a new and better way to steal our children’s lives, just as they’ve done by developing this new drug, crack. For every door that we close, they open a new door to death.” And then the famous line: “Say yes to your life. And when it comes to drugs and alcohol just say no.”...

 Instead of convincing kids not to use drugs, the hysteria around drug use by young people helped create some of the most destructive mechanisms of mass incarceration.

Fears of children getting addicted to drugs gave rise to the school-to-prison pipeline. Shortly after the First Lady launched her Just Say No campaign, Congress passed the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act in 1986, mandating zero tolerance for any drugs or alcohol found on public school grounds. That brought police officers into schools. Those police officers then started arresting students not only for drug possession but also for minor school code infractions, such as throwing Skittles or violating the dress code.

3 comments:

  1. “Our job is always easy because drug warriors are ingenious,” she said in the 1984 address. “We work everyday to plot a new and better way to steal our children’s lives, just as we've done by developing this new drug, crack. For every door that we pretend to close, we open a new door to death.” And then the famous line: “Say yes to your life. And when it comes to voting and politics, just say no.”...

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  2. A great bumper sticker I saw a few years ago: "Drugs destroy lives, drug prohibition destroys society"

    This car also had a Ron Paul and END THE FED sticker. The car was parked so I couldn't give a thumbs up to the driver.

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  3. Non-libertarians (the 99.99%) simply cannot and will not grasp for 1/2 of a second the idea that any particular government action they support could cause the reverse or worse of the allegedly intended outcome.

    This wonderful world is about 2 miles west of white privilege Grosse Pointe:

    According to court documents, a shooting war stemming from a 2014 murder erupted more than a year ago in an area bounded by Seven and Eight Mile roads and Gratiot Avenue and Kelly Road. The Seven Mile Bloods gang has claimed this area as its territory, records show, and refers to it as the “Red Zone” or “4-8-2-0-Die” in some of its rap lyrics.

    Federal prosecutors allege that Seven Mile Bloods is in an active gang war with an alliance of other gangs, including Hustle Boys, East Warren, Six Mile Chedda Ave., Gutta Boys, Maxout 220, BossHogs and Hustle.


    http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/01/14/detroit-gangsters-indicted/78785560/

    According to the Macomb Daily:

    Seven Mile Blood's drug sales largely take place on Lappin, Coram, Novara, Liberal, Manning and Tacoma, according to the indictment. They make their money predominately through the sale of drugs including cocaine, heroin, and prescription pills, out of vacant houses known as "trap houses."

    The usual response is to conclude that the magical benevolent government actors aren't fighting hard enough and need to redouble their efforts.

    This attitude is just a prevalent with Republicans as with Democrats where it also manifests itself in believing that the US military has magical powers to transform all of the foreign lands it invades. No fact or aspect of reality can penetrate these preconceived notions while 90% of libertarian/analysis is based upon abstractly understanding that domestic and foreign "blowback" is the most likely outcome of all of these government adventures. The intended beneficiaries of our brilliant analysis simply flatline when exposed to it.

    The latest from the Neocon rabble on Facebook is about what a monster Obama is because he threatened to shoot down Israeli planes if they tried to bomb Iran. The horror.

    And this is where we find ourselves.

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