The War on Drugs is in many ways the root of exploding police budgets...
Pedantic point, maybe, but the real root of those things was a mix of racism and a desire to violently oppress poor people to benefit the wealthy. The War on Drugs was a powerful means to do this, but without it, there would have been something else.
"The War on Bad Childhoods," where Black and/or poor parents are surveilled/incarcerated/beaten/shook down for "yelling" at their kids, perhaps?
That's a great point. There may well have been something else that would have been used to similar effect.
I don't think we should take for granted that this would have happened, though -- that skirts dangerously close to "whatever we do won't have any effect, anyways" territory. Maybe the replacement for the War on Drugs would have been substantially less harmful, or substantially easier to counter. Maybe it would have been more limited to the U.S. instead of becoming an imperialist project like the War on Drugs has become.
Pedantic point, maybe, but the real root of those things was a mix of racism and a desire to violently oppress poor people to benefit the wealthy. The War on Drugs was a powerful means to do this, but without it, there would have been something else.
"The War on Bad Childhoods," where Black and/or poor parents are surveilled/incarcerated/beaten/shook down for "yelling" at their kids, perhaps?
That's a great point. There may well have been something else that would have been used to similar effect.
I don't think we should take for granted that this would have happened, though -- that skirts dangerously close to "whatever we do won't have any effect, anyways" territory. Maybe the replacement for the War on Drugs would have been substantially less harmful, or substantially easier to counter. Maybe it would have been more limited to the U.S. instead of becoming an imperialist project like the War on Drugs has become.