How the Drug War Ruins American Lives

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A01=Arthur Benavie Professor Emeritus
Author_Arthur Benavie Professor Emeritus
Beneficiaries of the Drug War
Category=JKVG
Criminal Informants and False Testimony
Current Events and Issues
Drug Testing of Students and Workers
Drug War Benefits
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Invisible Punishments
Policing for Profit
Racial Disparities
Random Drug Sweeps
SWAT Raid Violence

Product details

  • ISBN 9781440850110
  • Weight: 595g
  • Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
  • Publication Date: 21 Mar 2016
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
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This book reveals the disturbing truth about how the escalation of the War on Drugs over the past 30 years has eroded the human and property rights of Americans—while doing little to stop drug trafficking or use.

Unique in its perspective, this eye-opening book looks at the drug war as a rights issue and concludes that Americans' civil liberties are clearly being violated. The volume proceeds from two premises: that over the past 30 years, America's War on Drugs has done more harm than good; and that if the United States is going to reform the criminal justice system, the public must understand that this "war" is empowered by the profits it provides to law enforcement and other groups.

A central factor causing the upsurge in the drug war, the author explains, is the fact that laws were passed in the 1980s that allowed law enforcement to profit from seizing property based on scanty evidence and without criminal charges. His meticulous research has revealed that this "policing for profit" is responsible for a variety of assaults on civil liberties, including mass incarceration, SWAT teams, and random drug sweeps. A second factor that infects every aspect of the War on Drugs is racism—the widespread stereotyping of drug traffickers as African Americans and Latinos. These issues and more are explored in this book that lays bare what the media largely ignores.

Arthur Benavie, PhD, is emeritus professor of economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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