[KirinDave]

Well, I guess if you're hell bent on erasing the victims of this horrible conspiracy so as to make an argument for greater latitude in recreational pharmaceutical use... Congratulations.

This is like "all lives matter." The idea that black people were victimized because there exists a crime to pin to them seems to me like you're changing the subject away from the humans whose lives are stolen by long term prison time, or from the terrifying treason against the American people this agency committed.

[jMyles]

They aren't two different things.

The "war on drugs" is, and was created precisely to be, a way to legally oppress people of color, especially black, latino, and Chinese people.

And it's not just this iteration of the "war on drugs." Prohibition generally, as a policy, has throughout history been first and foremost a tool to legally oppress people who have managed to win a modicum of legal protection otherwise.

You are the one diverting the argument by talking about "greater latitude in recreational pharmaceutical use," which, again in concert with every instance of prohibition throughout history, has not been interrupted by this policy and was never the impetus for its imposition to begin with.

[KirinDave]

I absolutely agree the "war on drugs" and racial bias in enforcement disproportionately hurts people of color. No one disagrees with that in this conversation.

What we disagree with is your decision to blame the law in this specific case rather than a racist conspiracy.

The reason your actions are scary here is that they follow a pattern of dehumanizing the crime and divorcing the responsibility for said disgusting actions from the people who did them (people who deserve life in prison many times over) and instead saying it is the law itself that did this. I mentioned "all lives matter" intentionally. You're following a very similar pattern here, but ignoring the perpetrators instead of the victims.

People did this. Cops and judges. They were not following a racist law.

[jMyles]

> They were not following a racist law.

Prohibition is a racist law. It is designed to strengthen the institution of racism. It was openly created for this purpose. It seems that you are trying to act like this isn't the case.

> ignoring the perpetrators instead of the victims.

The perpetrators include not only those who participated in these acts in Alabama, but also those who conspired to pretextually pass these laws in the first place.

If you prosecute everyone who participated in this crime, which I hope will happen but almost surely will not, and secure a just verdict in every single case, which I hope will happen but almost surely will not, but you fail to repeal prohibition entirely, you won't have made much progress against racism.

They aren't two different things; prohibition (and its material form, the prison state) is the same thing as racism.

[KirinDave]

> The perpetrators include not only those who participated in these acts in Alabama, but also those who conspired to pretextually pass these laws in the first place.

Which law specifically legalizes planting evidence on people and then covering up evidence of it?

> They aren't two different things; prohibition (and its material form, the prison state) is the same thing as racism.

No. Prohibition is part of what racism is in the west, but it is not the "same thing." There are many forms of racism people struggle with every day that don't have anything to do with prohibition.

As far as I can tell, you're appropriating this argument to turn an important chance to remind people how brutalized black people are in America and turn it into a conversation about drug use and enforcement. I find this reprehensible and racist in and of itself, and I will no longer entertain a conversation with you.

[jMyles]

No need to be hostile.

Perhaps you just haven't been exposed to the facts about drug prohibition (and its history) before.

Let me recommend a book which will crystallize these things for you:

http://newjimcrow.com/

> how brutalized black people are in America and turn it into a conversation about drug use and enforcement.

So, you keep making this mistake. I didn't change the topic; supporters of prohibition did when they argued for its passage.

You keep acting like prohibition is about "drug use" - it's not. It is about racial oppression, plain and simple.

Be reminded that "drug use" is almost completely legal. Of the tens of thousands of drugs in the contemporary pharmacopoeia, just a few are prohibited. These were selected specifically (and openly) because of their traditional use among non-white people.

Everybody uses drugs. Out of everybody, only poor people, and overwhelmingly poor people of color, suffer the effects of prohibition.

In fact, it's only recently (in the past 30 or so years) that prohibition (the "war on drugs") has even had a pretense of being race-neutral. From 1914 until ~1970, drug laws were open discussed as a way to perform racial oppression.

> "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

> “Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

These are things that our current prohibition's earliest champion, Harry Anslinger, appears to have said whilst holding national office as the chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

So again: prohibition is not currently, and has never been, about drug use. It is a policy enacted in a spirit of racism, with a racist intent, and per its design, continues the institution of racism. It has no other goal.

No matter what other policy change may come to this land, if prohibition continues, racism will not have been defeated.