Bill Clinton played a major role in expanding the drug war. His crime bills increased the number of death penalty offenses for drug trafficking, created three-strikes provisions, dramatically expanded funding for the DEA, and allocated $8 billion to construct federal and state prisons. He also set aside more than $8 billion to hire police. Drug incarcerations didn’t really start to spike until 1992, and almost all of that increase was for possession rather than distributing or manufacturing drugs.
