The return of the dangerous classes drug prohibition and policy politics
The Clinton administration has launched some new programs, talked about others to deal with this country's urgent social problems from poverty to crime to the environment. Meanwhile, the "war on drugs" is being fought with old weapons. Harsh punishments continue to be handed out at gr...
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| Format: | UnknownFormat |
| Sprache: | eng |
| Veröffentlicht: |
New York u.a.
Norton
1994
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| Ausgabe: | 1. ed. |
| Schlagworte: | |
| Online Zugang: | Inhaltsverzeichnis |
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Tag hinzufügen | Zusammenfassung: | The Clinton administration has launched some new programs, talked about others to deal with this country's urgent social problems from poverty to crime to the environment. Meanwhile, the "war on drugs" is being fought with old weapons. Harsh punishments continue to be handed out at great economic and social cost, but fail to control the most dangerous forms of illicit drug use. Diana R. Gordon examines up close some current get-tough policy making, from the citizen initiative recriminalizing pot possession in Alaska to a Michigan law requiring life sentences without parole for possession with intent to distribute more than 650 grams of heroin or cocaine, to the congressional consensus on the death penalty for major drug trafficking. She finds that recent drug prohibition policies have done as much to distort our politics and impoverish our community life as the drug problem itself. A "shadow agenda" sustains the war on drugs, giving politicians symbolic opportunities to express protectiveness and to manipulate racial fears. Both leaders and ordinary citizens use the drug problem to construct enemies - blacks, youth, aliens - who can be blamed for American social and economic ills. These are the "dangerous classes," whose return is polarizing American society. In hard-hitting detail, Gordon reveals the terrible price we pay for pursuing failed efforts at eradicating illegal drug use, efforts that only intensify racial and generational conflicts, provide hollow substitutes for meaningful activism, and decimate constitutional protections for the innocent as well as the guilty. Today's drug prohibition politics, she concludes, distract us from our deeper social problems: deprivation, disease, and inequality. |
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| Beschreibung: | XI, 316 S. graph. Darst. |
| ISBN: | 0393036421 0-393-03642-1 |