When Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, he implemented mandatory sentencing for first-time drug convictions, and put in place the infamous 100-to-1 ratio—which mandated vastly disproportionate sentencing for those caught with crack rather than powder cocaine, a policy that converted the racial scare tactics of the War on Drugs into actual prison terms. One 1995 survey asked participants: “Would you close your eyes for a second, envision a drug user, and describe that person to me?” Even though African Americans constituted only 15 percent of the nation’s drug users, 95 percent of
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