Before the War on Drugs slogan took hold, President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one.” However, it is the administration of President Ronald Reagan that is responsible for the mass imprisonment of dark people. In 1980, there were less than half a million people in prison in the US. Twenty years later that number had reached close to 2.2 million.15 President Reagan’s policies emphasized imprisoning drug offenders while cutting funding for addiction treatment, privatizing prisons, and disenfranchising millions of dark Americans from their right to vote.
