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Drugs and ThugsThe History and Future of America's War on Drugs$
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Drugs and Thugs: The History and Future of America's War on Drugs

Russell Crandall

Print publication date: 2020

Print ISBN-13: 9780300240344

Published to Yale Scholarship Online: May 2021

DOI: 10.12987/yale/9780300240344.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM YALE SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.yale.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Yale University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in YSO for personal use.date: 03 July 2022

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Chapter:
(p.175) 12 Supply Side
Source:
Drugs and Thugs
Author(s):

Russell Crandall

Publisher:
Yale University Press
DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300240344.003.0013

This chapter describes how America was in “full fury” over drugs with the alleged crack epidemic when George H. W. Bush took office on January 20, 1989. It talks about how Bush took to network television to warn the American public of the national emergency of drugs, using a bag of crack that the Drug Enforcement Administration had managed to purchase near the White House as a prop. It also refers to “drug czar” William Bennett, who echoed Progressive-era reformers in framing the question about substance use in terms of American moral identity and contended that drugs represented a crisis of national character. The chapter cites the late 1980s and early 1990s as the period in which the United States most forcefully brought the drug war to source countries, aiming to cease the operation of poppy, coca, and cannabis fields in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Mexico. It elaborates Bush's support in taking military action in other countries to interrupt drug production.

Keywords:   crack epidemic, drug czar, William Bennett, American moral identity, George H. W. Bush, national emergency

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