Jay Z Calls The War On Drugs An ‘Epic Fail’ That Targets Black Americans.
The War on Drugs is an “epic fail,” Jay Z argued Thursday in a blistering animated op-ed for the New York Times.
The rapper — narrating his withering indictment over furiously scrawled illustrations from artist Molly Crabapple — echoed a widely held view that drug laws implemented by President Nixon and enhanced by Ronald Reagan had disproportionately targeted black and Latino men, with few results to show in 2016.
“Drugs were bad; fried your brain. And drug dealers were monsters, the sole reason neighborhoods and major cities were failing,” Jay Z said in the nearly four-minute video, the concept for which was pioneered by filmmaker Dream Hampton.
Jay goes on to touch on mandatory minimum sentences that disproportionately affected blacks and Latinos, as well as the racism embedded in how drug laws were written and enforced. While the clip acknowledges recent strides to combat the War on Drugs, such as speaking about addiction to harder drugs as a health crisis, even lucrative marijuana legalization efforts in states like Colorado are tainted by failed drug policies.
“Venture capitalists migrate to these states to open multi-billion dollar operations, but former felons can’t open a dispensary,” Jay Z says. “Lots of times those felonies were drug charges caught by poor people, who sold drugs for a living but are now prohibited from participating in one of the fastest-growing economies.”
Check out the video above.
Jay-z, war on drugs, NyTimes Op-ed
