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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

War on Drugs

Contents of this path:

First Lady Nancy Reagan sits with students at Rosewood Elementary School in Los Angeles in February 1987 as they listen to a DARE presentation by a Los Angeles police officer. In 1983, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Daryl Gates, and the Los Angeles Unified School District started the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program. The program, which still exists today, pairs students with local police officers in an effort to reduce drug use, gang membership and violence. Students learn about the dangers of substance abuse and are required to take a pledge to stay away from drugs and gangs. D.A.R.E. has been implemented in about 75 percent of U.S. school districts.
First Lady Nancy Reagan makes a “Just Say No” in Harpers Ferry West Virginia on September 11, 1968 “The effectiveness of DARE in altering students’ drug use behavior has yet to be established," concluded a University of Illinois at Chicago study in 1991. Other research arrived at similar conclusions. In 1994, the Research Triangle Institute, funded in part by the Justice Department, conducted a meta-analysis of all the existing research on DARE. Its conclusion was withering: DARE had little to no impact on rates of teen drug use
On September 23, 1987, first lady Nancy Reagan accepts on behalf of the “Just Say No Club” a check from the Procter & Gamble company for $150,000, in Washington, D.C. "Just Say No" was an advertising campaign prevalent during the 1980s and early 1990s as a part of the U.S.-led war on drugs, aiming to discourage children from engaging in illegal recreational drug use by offering various ways of saying no. The slogan was created and championed by Nancy Reagan during her husband's presidency
Graphic showing U.S. Prison Population from 1970-2017 In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain drug offenses. This law was later heavily criticized as having racist ramifications because it allocated longer prison sentences for offenses involving the same amount of crack cocaine (used more often by black Americans) as powder cocaine (used more often by white Americans). Five grams of crack triggered an automatic five-year sentence, while it took 500 grams of powder cocaine to merit the same sentence
At the Richmond Boys Club, a sign urging young people to "say no" to drugs. December 15, 1989. Michael Macor, photographer. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Oakland Museum of California. The Oakland Tribune Collection. Gift of ANG Newspapers. In this 1989 photo, a young boy plays ping-pong at the Richmond Boys Club. Above him is a sign with the anti-drug slogan "Just Say No!" originally promoted by the Reagan Administration in 1984 to coincide with the administration's War on Drugs.
On October 14, 1982, President Ronald Reagan declared illicit drugs to be a threat to U.S. national security. Spreading the anti-drug message, first lady Nancy Reagan toured elementary schools, warning students about the danger of illicit drugs. When a fourth grader at Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, California, asked her what to do if approached by someone offering drugs, the first lady responded: “Just say no.” In 1988, Reagan created the Office of National Drug Control Policy to coordinate drug-related legislative, security, diplomatic, research and health policy throughout the government. Successive agency directors were dubbed “drug czars” by the media. In 1993, President Bill Clinton raised the post to Cabinet-level status.
Graphic showing U.S. imprisonment rate versus crime rate from 1960-2008 Critics also pointed to data showing that people of color were targeted and arrested on suspicion of drug use at higher rates than whites. Overall, the policies led to a rapid rise in incarcerations for nonviolent drug offenses, from 50,000 in 1980 to 400,000 in 1997. In 2014, nearly half of the 186,000 people serving time in federal prisons in the United States had been incarcerated on drug-related charges, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.