on June 24, 1982, President Reagan declared war on her unborn baby. “We must put drug abuse on the run through stronger law enforcement,” Reagan said in the Rose Garden. It wasn’t drug abuse that was put on the run, of course, but people like me, born into this regime of “stronger law enforcement.” The stiffer sentencing policies for drug crimes—not a net increase in crime—caused the American prison population to quadruple between 1980 and 2000.
