The government War on Drugs begun during the Reagan era came to full fruition when George Bush’s drug czar, William Bennett, laid out the National Drug Control Strategy in 1989. At the end of the 1980s, U.S. News & World Report disclosed that “76 percent of those who use illegal drugs are white” (Anderson 182). Nevertheless, drug czar William Bennett’s strategy allocated more than 70 percent of total resources to fight street-level drug operations in heavily populated urban areas like Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis and New York (Anderson 182). Yet, even though the majority of literature reported that crack addiction was prevalent throughout the country among white suburbanites and minorities, urban and minority areas were the target of Bennett’s war on drugs.
Anderson’s analysis of the war on drugs as presented in the media is an eye-opening account of how the media has been used by politicians and law enforcement agencies in ways that present biased portrayals of those using or selling drugs, smacks of racism, violates constitutional rights of citizens, and turns away from the real questions and causes of the war on drugs in American society. As the author relates, the media does not attack the root of the cause of the high use of drugs, demand. If it did, it would have to “confront the reasons for which more than 30 million people in every sector of American society use drugs. Including a discussion of demand might lead to a critique of American social and cultural life” (Anderson 192).
The media’s war on drugs includes a host of reality-based law enforcement programming that is designed to allow the spectator a bird’s-eye view of fighting drug dealers and criminal in American society. However, these shows are often biased, empathize with white users at the expense of demonizing minority users, and allow for law enforcement officials to present the “whole” story as if they were judge, jury, and han...