Vice President Joe Biden was a huge driving force behind America’s deadly and expensive war on drugs, a war that disproportionately targets minorities and the poor, reported Huffington Post.
For two decades, starting in the 1980s, Biden and other lawmakers designed and pushed several “tough on crime” laws in the wake of a crack epidemic that the Establishment only cared about when it affected affluent white people. Biden’s efforts helped imprison millions of non-violent offenders, increased police militarization, and made the drug war a profit center for law enforcement.
Beginning in 1984, Biden cosponsored a bill that incentivized police to seize assets from people suspected of engaging in drug activity. One doesn’t even have to be charged, but police began seizing private property and subsequently turned a profit. In modern times, police now abuse that incentive to legally mug American citizens.
The U.S. Department of Justice only recently placed some restrictions on police civil seizures.
Biden supported Bill Clinton’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which is a tough-on-crime “super law” that expanded American law enforcement and increased the number of acting officers.
Ring of Fire reported that “The law expanded funding for state and local law enforcement agencies to put more officers on the streets, it gave cash incentives for throwing more people in jail, and it gutted rehabilitation and crime-prevention programs while increasing spending on prison construction.”
Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is critical of the super law. “Here’s the federal government coming in and saying we’ll give you money if you punish people more severely, and 28 states and the District of Columbia followed the money and enacted stricter sentencing laws,” said Travis.
The drug war is out of control, and we have Joe Biden to partly thank for that. Thanks, Biden. These “tough on crime” laws did nothing to curb drug use in America. It’s a horrible policy that has ruined millions of lives, packed prisons, and created a multi-billion dollar revenue stream for law enforcement agencies.
