The U.S. government role in the drug epidemic

Today, I found a video about how drugs were flowing free from Nicaragua into the poor, African-American neighborhoods in the USA. I have heard about some of the issues concerning the Black Panther Party from the 1970s. Alot of cocaine was allowed to flow into the USA from Central and South America. There was so much cocaine brought into the African-American neighborhoods. Why? To fight the Black Panther Party. They were deemed to be the biggest threat to the security of the USA. If drugs were flowing, well, think about this: You have drugs flowing in and the persons who don't have work use drugs as the escape. People who were busy educating themselves on fighting the struggle against the U.S. government corruption, now could became more concerned with making money, selling drugs. The persons who took their frustrations on the power structure now took their frustrations on each other.

However, this is what I didn't know. I didn't know that the cocaine flowing into the USA was being used to fund a war in Nicaragua. There was a war being fought in Nicaragua during the 1980s. It was a proxy war. Since the USA and the Soviet Union couldn't kill each other in the Cold War, so they used proxy wars. The Sandinistas were being funded by the Soviet Union. This scared the USA because this could mean communism nearby. How did the CIA fund such a war? Well, the USA government was cutting funding for this war. The USA government let cocaine into the African-American neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Why? The CIA needed to fund the contras to fight the Sandinistas. Basically, the government has been willing to sacrifice certain segments of its population to fulfill some kind of hubris, and in this case, it was the Nicaraguan war. This was a big part of the drug war. Ironic. Reagan is talking about drugs being on the streets. His wife saying "just say no". Well, they let the drugs in because they knew people would sell that stuff and it would fund the CIA backed contras in Nicaragua. Basically, the drug war was part of some proxy war. The government was willing to let poor, African-American citizens be sacrificed to fight some mission. When it was found that cocaine could be made into a cheaper, smokable form, called crack. Why is it that crack warrants a tougher punishment than cocaine? Think about this. Crack is basically a condensed version of cocaine. It is cheap, and more accessible to poorer African-American residents in African-American neighborhoods. If there wasn't any purposeful maliciousness towards African-Americans, there was certainly a callous sacrifice of many African-Americans. It was certainly callous and malicious. Lives were lost in the crack epidemic. People were going to prison for longer than ever before. The drug laws were made stricter in the late 1960's. Well, this would cause problems in the 1980s. What good was it to fight that mission if the by-product of it was to have the prisons fill up? Well, alot of money is made building prisons. More money is being made from building prisons that rehabilitating drug addicts.

Please remember, I am not advocating the use of cocaine. I am not advocating the use of crack. Crack will do some bad things to you. Cocaine isn't any better either. However, I am not in favor of putting people in prison for using drugs. In fact, this whole drug war was used to fund a war and other "missions". Basically, because impoverished African-American lives were considered "dispensible". I would argue that this is so because of historical racism in the USA, some lingering racism, and the fact that if these drugs were to flow into poor, White neighborhoods, there might be a large, public outcry. Whites outnumber African-American 5 to 1, and probably around 7 to 1 back in the 1980's. If African-American lives from the poor, urban areas are being lost, fewer people are worrying about it.