A Critique of the Federal Government: U.S Drug Regulation Throughout the 20th Century and Effects on Minority Populations
Abstract:
Drug regulation, at the turn of the 20th century, began to pick up pace and become a larger part of American policy by the early 1900’s. As regulation took more of a center stage, ideas surrounding restriction and prohibition became a larger influence on leadership and the policy that came out of the government at this time. These ideas of restriction characterize my main theme throughout this comp, that being the shift to prohibition and illegalization, and further this shift as representative of minority discrimination and racism. I have broken up 20th century drug regulation efforts into three categories for the purposes of this comp. These three groups consist of chronological time periods and serve as effective case studies in examining the differences between these time periods as well as the evolving minority discrimination that inherently went along with policy of this nature. The first period consists of the turn to the 20th century, following the end of the Spanish American War, and up until the mid to late 1930’s with the creation of the Bureau of Narcotics. The next two periods consist of the presidential administrations of both Richard Nixon (1969-1974) and Ronald Reagan (1981-1989). These two presidents, or rather administrations, are a focus of my examinations as during both time periods, drug regulation took the center stage in domestic and foreign policy, leading to an unprecedented quantity of legislation occurring under these two presidencies in comparison to the rest of the 20th century. This legislation has had long- lasting detrimental effects on minority populations and has influenced the way the United States has dealt with and enforced drug use and addiction permanently.