Race and Rhetoric in Reagan’s War on Drugs
Rachel C. Mass
Kent State University
Today, the perception of drug use as an inherent threat to society is so commonplace that it seems to have always existed. In reality, public officials and media have been carefully and deliberately manufacturing this narrative for several decades. In his declaration of the War on Drugs, President Reagan initiated a major shift in the public perception of drug use that would generate support for the unprecedentedly punitive anti-drug laws he would pass during his presidency. Analysis of President Reagan’s legacy and the impact of his policies on people of color in America indicate that the foundation of his War on Drugs rhetoric was not legitimate concern for drug use as a social problem in the nation, but a fear of social progress toward racial equality. As the War on Drugs continues to serve as a vehicle of racial oppression today, the quest for racial justice calls for a comprehensive understanding of the ultimate purpose of the War on Drugs, the strategies the Reagan administration undertook in working toward its goals, and the impact of Reagan era drug policy on the nation today.
In “The Role of Presidential Rhetoric in Creating a Moral Panic: Reagan, Bush and the War on Drugs,” James E. Hawdon argues that the concern about drug use that suddenly swept the under President Reagan in the mid-1980s meets the criteria for a “moral panic.” Moral panic is a well-documented phenomenon among sociologists and political scientists, which Hawdon defines as “the widespread feeling on part of the public that something is terribly wrong in their society because of the moral failings of a specific group of individuals” (Hawdon, 2001). He explains that moral panic differs from the similar phenomenon of public hysteria in that hysteria is directed at a threat or problem which does not actually exist in the world. Moral panic, on the other hand, is based on a real issue that may legitimately need to be addressed, though it drastically overestimates the magnitude and urgency of that problem and may include deliberate misinformation about the source of the problem (Hawdon, 2001).
Analyses of the impact of drug use on the nation before and during the Reagan Era support Hawdon’s hypothesis that the issue of drug use in the United States was not nearly as pressing as President Reagan and the media portrayed it to be. Between 1979 and 1985, a period of time that extends from two years before Reagan’s president all the way until the end of his first time in office, the number of young adults who had ever used marijuana or cocaine “decreased by 12% and 11%, respectively” (Hawdon, 2001). Furthermore, public polls had shown that concern about drug use was at an all-time low among the general population. In October 1982, when President Reagan officially declared his new War on Drugs, less than 2% of Americans viewed drugs as “the most important issue facing the nation” (Alexander, 2012). Though sourced directly from the federal government, these figures did nothing to deter Reagan from declaring the most punitive, militaristic response to drugs that the United States has ever seen.
In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Era of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander speculates that these conditions had failed to influence Reagan’s drug policy approach because “the drug war from the outset had little to do with public concern about drugs and much to do with public concern about race. By waging a war on drug users and dealers, Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the racially defined ‘others’” (Alexander, 2012). As justification for this argument, she cites President Reagan’s use of “law and order” rhetoric to justify his unprecedented policy response to drug use in the nation. She elaborates on the racially-charged, deliberately divisive origin of “law and order” rhetoric, which was first mobilized by Southern governors and law enforcement officials in the late 1950s in response to calls for nationwide racial integration. Although The Supreme Court had set a legal precedent for desegregation in 1954 with its landmark ruling that racial segregation in schools and other public facilities was unconstitutional in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, many Southern states were reluctant to take any steps toward desegregation. Thus, government officials in these states delayed implementation of desegregation policies for as long as possible, some of them for years after the Supreme Court ruling. During this time, civil rights activists had started to engage in direct action against these states, hoping to force government officials and law enforcement to comply with federal law. Instead, non-compliant parties attempted to delegitimize these efforts by framing them as criminal in an effort to defend themselves (Alexander, 2012).
Ultimately, this framing provided a logical basis for the argument that the rise and growing success of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s was indicative of “a breakdown of law and order” (Alexander, 2012). For more than a decade, conservatives deliberately and systematically linked participation in the Civil Rights Movement to crime and social decay. Many argued, for example, that Martin Luther King Jr’s philosophy of civil disobedience was a “leading cause of crime” (Alexander, 2012). Richard Nixon, who was vice president of the United States at that time, used his authority in the eyes of the American people to lend legitimacy to this argument. On one occasion, he commented that the increasing crime rate “can be traced directly to the spread of the corrosive doctrine that every citizen possesses an inherent right to decide for himself which laws to obey and when to disobey them” (Alexander, 2012). Some segregationists went even further, citing the relatively low crime rates of Southern states that had yet to implement desegregation as proof that racial segregation is a direct cause of crime (Alexander, 2012).
Moreover, the conservative framing of the Civil Rights Movement as criminal rather than political the foundation for a tactic with which conservatives would successfully win over poor white voters from the Democratic Party, as segregationists could now paint supporters of civil rights legislation as passive supporters of criminal activity. In the years that followed, conservatives accused the Supreme Court of contributing to the spread of crime through its “excessive lenience toward lawlessness” in an attempt to delegitimize its recent civil rights rulings and to justify its refusal to comply with them (Alexander, 2012). Likewise, conservative politicians had been able to win over poor white voters who felt threatened by the rise of the Civil Rights Movement by painting the Democratic Party as complicit in “rewarding lawbreakers” for its support of civil rights legislation and by vowing to uphold the “racial order.” The latter was especially successful in winning over poor white voters, as many of them had become accustomed to the privilege the racial hierarchy afforded them and depended on white supremacy as their only source of social superiority. Conservatives appealed to this racist sense of superiority by maintaining that poverty was caused “not by structural factors like class and race but by culture—particularly black culture” (Alexander, 2012). In short, the “law and order” rhetoric that Reagan incorporated into his framing of drug use in the nation and his declaration of an all-out War on Drugs has always had aggressive, racially-charged implications.
In short, Alexander hypothesizes that the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs was a deliberate attack on black Americans, intended to counteract the progress the Civil Rights Movement had made in the last few decades so as to uphold the racial caste system that white Americans had come to depend on. Furthermore, this hypothesis about the War on Drugs is consistent with the reality of its implementation. At the time of its implementation, those most likely to support the War on Drugs were white voters, particularly those who “remained resentful of black progress, civil rights enforcement, and affirmative action” (Alexander, 2012). Decades later, “tough on crime” policies apparently receive the most support from these same demographics. Researchers found that racial attitudes, more so than crime rates or likelihood of victimization, are an important determinant of white support for “get tough on crime” policies today. Furthermore, among white people, those who express the most concern about crime also tend to oppose racial reform, and there seems to be no correlation between the severity of punishment they advocate for crime and the likelihood that they will be victims of crime. In other words, rhetoric that emphasizes “law and order” and advocates “getting tough on crime” largely aims to disguise racially-charged messages in race-neutral language, thereby allowing white people to express racist attitudes and positions openly without necessarily admitting to their racism (Alexander, 2012).
Alexander’s hypothesis seems even more plausible in view of President Reagan’s reputation for anti-civil rights policy and rhetoric. In “The Civil Rights Legacy of Ronald Reagan,” C. Calvin Smith outlines the Reagan administration’s strategic obstruction of civil rights enforcement. He notes that during Reagan’s presidency, violence and other acts of prejudice against people of color in America escalated dramatically. According to Smith, this trend was an inevitable result of the “law and order” rhetoric on which Reagan campaigned, as President Reagan “brought into office an anti-civil rights attitude that closely paralleled the white supremacist attitude that was commonplace in the Old South” (Smith, 1990).
Moreover, President Reagan exacerbated the damage of the then-commonplace attacks on racial minorities by taking unprovoked legal action against the entities that had been established to protect and enforce civil rights. For example, one of President Reagan’s first initiatives involved the abolition of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), an organization which provided free legal services to the poor and other marginalized groups, on the charge that it filed frivolous lawsuits against the government and allegedly prioritized social reform over the legal rights of its individual clients. While Congress had refused to abolish the LSC on those grounds, the Reagan administration’s charges against the LSC convinced the legislature to cut a significant amount of federal funding to the organization—25 percent in just one fiscal year. As a result, the LSC was forced to reduce its staff by 30 percent as well as close more than 300 field offices nationally. The Reagan administration took similar actions against two other leading civil rights enforcement agencies, The United States Civil Rights Commission (USCRC) and the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EOEC), over the next few years (Smith, 1990).
Congress had agreed to drastic cuts in funding to all three federal civil rights enforcement agencies in what many of them considered a moderate compromise to the administration’s initial proposal to abolish the agencies altogether. However, the funding cuts effectively accomplished exactly what President Reagan had been aiming for with the first proposal. Lack of funding had devastated all three agencies, severely limiting their ability to enforce civil rights legislation. Once irrevocable damage had been done to the LSC, the USCRC, and the EOEC, all that remained in place to protect civil rights at the federal level were Affirmative Action (AA) programs, which heavily relied on government support and funding in its continued effort to desegregate schools and ensure equal employment opportunities for minorities. Remarkably, what prevented the Reagan administration from dismantling these programs was the unwavering support they enjoyed from the general population. Since changes in AA programs were to be voted on by the public, President Reagan attempted to manipulate public opinion in his favor by trying to create tension between three groups who benefitted from it the most—blacks, Hispanics, and women (Smith, 1990). Reagan hoped that by pitting these groups against each other, he could convince each of them that AA programs put their demographic at a disadvantage to others. This method was not successful, however, as each of these groups had noticed such significant gains in employment opportunities and average wages since the enactment of AA programs that they could not be persuaded to vote against them. Smith notes that after this tactical failure, the Reagan administration opted for litigation and other executive actions rather than appeals to the public in attempting to make its desired changes (Smit, 1990).
Nonetheless, it would be inaccurate to view President Reagan’s failure to sway the public opinion of AA programs as evidence of his ineptitude at manipulating the public narrative. As Hawdon indicates in his characterization of the War on Drugs as a moral panic, the public perception of illicit drug use and its potential impact on the nation was not at all consistent with the more realistic perspective on the issue that empirical evidence suggests. Moreover, the sudden spike in public concern about the issue occurred shortly after the Reagans addressed the American public about the importance of the War on Drugs in combatting a major threat to the nation, which suggests the President Reagan’s rhetoric played a key role in this shift in public perception. In “The Role of Presidential Rhetoric in the Creation of a Moral Panic: Reagan, Bush, and the War on Drugs,” Hawdon identifies two forms of rhetoric that President Reagan employed to successfully re-frame the public narrative around drug use so that it met the criteria for a moral panic. First, President illustrates the alleged impact of drug use on the nation through emotional appeal to family values and unfounded speculation about the implications the issue could theoretically have. His depiction of the issue is not only inaccurate, but barely concrete. Moreover, his claims about the scope of the issue exceed the available facts about the issue (Hawdon, 2001). Second, Reagan makes use of policy rhetoric, an implicit form of rhetoric which Hawdon defines as a “purposive course of action followed by an actor or a set of actors in dealing with a problem or concern” on which the public bases its understanding of the issue (Hawdon, 2001). In other words, the public tends to trust the policy responses of an executive leader like the President, whether or not they approve of those responses. Hence, even citizens who disagree with a specific action the President takes in response to a given issue tend to base their impressions of the issue’s magnitude on the scale of the President’s action relative to his other policy responses (Hawdon, 2001).
He explains that every policy responses exists on two axes. On one axis, a policy response may be proactive or reactive. Proactive policies coincide with a communitarian perspective, and emphasize the need for decisive, aggressive action that benefits the community, even if it causes harm to some individuals (Hawdon, 2001). Reactive policies, conversely, views the individual as fundamentally good, though susceptible to corruption from outside forces, and emphasizes the need to protect the individual from external evil. On the other axis, a policy response may be more rehabilitative, more punitive, or a combination of both. While proactive and reactive policies can be described in theoretical terms, the specifications of rehabilitative versus punitive policy depend on the issue to which the policy is meant to respond. In the context of drug policy, rehabilitative policy corresponds with the medical model; it conceives of drug use or addiction is a disease which requires treatment. Likewise, punitive policy corresponds to the criminal model; it conceives of drug use or addiction as a lifestyle choice and holds that people who make that choice should be held accountable and treated as criminals (Hawdon, 2001).
After identifying the role of a President in shaping public perception, Hawdon outlines the process by which a President might weaponize his authority in the eyes of the American people to induce a moral panic. The first stage of this process involves a strong appeal to communitarian values and a corresponding call-to-action. The President may accomplish this by glorifying the group he means to appeal to at the expense of a sub-group within it. By shifting the blame for social problems to a specific demographic or some other set of individuals, the President effectively absolves the larger group of any blame or guilt they may feel for those who may face negative consequences as a result of its collective response to the issue. Also, it takes the issue out of the context of reality, which makes it easier to exaggerate (Hawdon, 2001). In the context of Reagan era drug policy, conservatives’ strategic linking of the Civil Rights Movement to criminal behavior laid the foundation for President Reagan to shift blame for the consequences of drug use—both real and imagined—onto people of color.
The second stage of the process involves sustaining the moral panic for long enough to create approval for a drastic policy response. This may require the President to achieve a skillful balance between continuing to exaggerate the problem and keeping the public’s faith in his ability to solve the problem. The most effective way to achieve this is to demonstrate that some progress has been made, while simultaneously expressing that there is a considerable amount of work left to do before the problem can be solved. Hawdon emphasizes that the President’s performance at this stage of the process largely determines the outcome of the moral panic. If the public does not see any improvement of circumstances as a result of the President’s policy response, or if it has some other reason to doubt that the action will help to solve the problem, the moral panic may escalate until public hysteria, a state which the President will have no control over. Likewise, if a small portion of the President’s intended policy response seems to sufficiently solve the problem, the public will lose interest in the issue at hand, and likely will not support actions related to the problem in the future. In Hawdon’s words, “If the action is too successful, there is nothing left to fight” (Hawdon, 2001).
In the context of drug policy, this stage is likely to involve changes in policy objectives, and may make use of a dual model of drug use. That is, the President may present the issue of drug use in terms of the medical model and the criminal model simultaneously, or may argue that drug use may coincide with either model on a case-by-case basis. The criminal model is necessary to maintain the President’s appeal to communitarian values at the expense of a specific sub-group, since the public is likely to question more drastic policy responses if there is not “other” group to blame for the problem. At the same time, the rehabilitative model is necessary to show that some progress has been made in solving the problem. If the number of people facing punishment for drug use continues to grow with no rehabilitative element, the public is likely to deduce that the problem is getting worse. Consequently, policy makers often define a group who has been cured of the disease to avoid creating too many ‘‘outsiders” (Hawdon, 2001).
If the President successfully maintains control of the public narrative surrounding the issue at the foundation of the moral panic, then he may begin the third and final stage of the process. Ideally, this stage involves effective implementation of a policy which achieve the President’s goals and consequently bring the moral panic to an end. In most cases, this policy response is considerably more drastic than most of the public would have supported outside the conditions of a moral panic. In the context of Reagan era drug policy, the moral panic about panics allowed Reagan to implement strongly proactive drug policies. One example is the Zero Tolerance Policy, which Hawdon categorizes as one of the most proactive approaches in the history of drug policy (Hawdon 432). In his Radio Address to the Nation on Economic Growth and the War on Drugs on October 8, 1988, Ronald Reagan describes his Zero Tolerance Policy,
“When we say zero tolerance, we mean, simply, that we've had it. We will no longer tolerate those who sell drugs and those who buy drugs. All Americans of good will are determined to stamp out those parasites who survive and even prosper by feeding off the energy and vitality and humanity of others. They must pay. We believe that when those who sell drugs are caught they must make redress for the damage they cause” (Ronald Reagan: Economic Growth and the War on Drugs, 1988).
Public support for such an action was exceptional, as historically, drug policy in the United States has been entirely reactive. Once the Reagan administration abandoned its Zero Tolerance Policy, the moral panic about drug use in the nation subsided, though there was practically no change in public support the action. From this evidence, Hawdon speculates that the public judged Reagan’s proactive policy responses to be effective. Thus, it had perceived the administration’s abandonment of such policies as indication of not failure, but success. That is, the public likely inferred that the policy response had made enough progress on the issue so that it no longer posed a threat to public welfare, and therefore no longer required a strong punitive response (Hawdon, 2001). Thus, Hawdon concludes, “resident Reagan masterfully incited the public and helped create a moral panic. The use of communitarian arguments rallied support for an aggressive war on drugs” (Hawdon, 2001).
In “Rumors of War: Rhetoric And Orientation in the Reagan's "War on Drugs" Speech,” Gary Krug applies a similar theoretical approach to Reagan’s use of rhetoric in addressing the War on Drugs to his historic address to the public on September 14, 1986 during which he officially declared the War on Drugs. Krug emphasizes that this address distinguishes itself from Reagan’s other broadcasts to the public in that it involves the joint speeches of President Reagan and his wife, Mrs. Reagan. For this reason, Krug argues that the address is more accurately understood as a collaborative, carefully rehearsed performance rather than a speech (Krug, 1989). The main elements of the performance, in Krug’s view, are the themes of the address and the position of the speakers. The theme of the speech is not simply The War on Drugs or the problem of drug use in America, but in Krug’s words, “a call for national mobilization against the growing ‘threat’ of drug abuse” (Krug, 1989). Notably, Krug’s definition of the theme of the address fits Hawdon’s description of the first stage in creating a moral panic.
Nonetheless, Krug urges readers not to confuse the theme of the speech with the intention of its speakers. While the theme of a speech encompasses the call-to-action within it, the “intention” of the speakers refers to the theme’s desired effect (Krug, 1989). President Reagan clearly states his intention clearly in the speech itself, “We seek to create a massive change in national attitudes which ultimately will separate the drugs from the customer, to take the user away from the supply. I believe, quite simply, that we can help them quit, and that's where you come in” (Ronald Reagan: Campaign Against Drug Abuse, 1986). In other words, the theme of the speech is a mass mobilization against drug use. However, this statement in Reagan’s speech indicates that his intention is to generate approval for his framing of drug use in the nation and to inspire a mass mobilization of Americans who ardently support his drug policy approach.
The collaborative format of the address allows the Reagan administration to benefit from two different speaker positions. President Reagan takes the role competent, solemn figure of authority, while Mrs. Reagan takes on the role of a concerned mother and wife who can directly relate to the average American by appealing to traditional family values. Krug notes that in President Reagan’s speech, he focuses solely on his position as “commander-in-chief, as head of the state, the organizer of public and political action” (Krug 354). Thus, he does not refer to his roles as part of a family—a parent, a grandparent—outside the context of his presidency (Krug 354). When he does mention his role as a parent, it is in the context of his Presidential visit to the American Cemetery at Normandy with his family, during which he says, “You are Americans. You’re the product of the freest society mankind has ever known” (Ronald Reagan: Campaign Against Drug Abuse, 1986). In this way, he deliberately subordinates his role as a father to his role as the President of the United States, characterizing himself as a member of the nation rather than of an individual family (Krug, 1989). Furthermore, he is careful to emphasize his position of power throughout the speech, even in regards to his interactions with family. For example, he makes sure to mention that Mrs. Reagan’s participation in the performance is at his request (Krug, 1989). Alluding to Mrs. Reagan’s collaboration in the speech, he states, “Her personal observations and insights have given her such dramatic insights that I wanted her to share them with you this evening” (Ronald Reagan: Campaign Against Drug Abuse, 1986). This framing of Mrs. Reagan’s role in the speech subordinates her address to an extension of his, which affirms his role as head of the family, and by extension, head of the state.
Accordingly, in her portion of the speech, Mrs. Reagan is careful to maintain her position as a complementary participant in the performance. Her demeanor suggests awareness of and careful compliance with “conservative audience expectations of issues of concern for a woman: the home and family” (Krug, 1989). Thus, she focuses on the “emotive aspects” of the issue as a concerned wife and mother, which ultimately allows her to speak to her own attitudes and experiences as if the audience had them in common with her. She introduces herself as “a mother” at the beginning of her speech, but she does not address specific relationship within her family. Instead, she focuses on universal parental experiences that a significant portion of the audience can most likely relate to (Krug, 1989). For example, she remarks, “I’ve always thought of September as a special month, a time when we bundled our children off to school” (Nancy Reagan, “Just Say No,” 1986). In this way, she establishes herself as more of a symbol of concerned parenthood than an individual concerned parent, which transforms the concerns she expresses about drug abuse into a universal commitment to protect the nation’s children as if they were her own. In short, Mrs. Reagan’s portion of the speech complements President Reagan’s speech by appealing to conservative family values, which compensates for President Reagan’s inability to appeal to this perspective in his speech due to his posturing as a stern figure of authority (Krug, 1989).
Nonetheless, the Reagan administration’s success in shaping the public narrative around the crack crisis and drug use in general was not the result of presidential rhetoric alone. As Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson explain in “The Media and the Construction of the Drug Crisis in America,” media “play a crucial role in shaping public perceptions of political and social issues” (Beckett, Sasson, 1998). For example, research suggests that the public is significantly more likely to identify issues as primary concerns for the nation if the issues frequently appear in mainstream media. Likewise, researchers analyzing the impact of repeat exposure of particular crime stories on viewers of mainstream media found a strong correlation between the content of the story, the assessments of the problem reporters put forth or emphasize in their coverage of it, and the support for particular crime policies (Beckett, Sasson 1998).
After the Reagan’s address in 1986, mainstream media were apparently more than willing to cooperate with his framing of the issue. In June 1986, for example, Newsweek declared the crack crisis to be “the biggest story since Vietnam/Watergate,” and in August of the same year, Time declared the spread of crack cocaine through impoverished, predominantly black neighborhoods “the issue of the year” (Alexander, 2012). Moreover, the thousands of stories about crack cocaine that suddenly inundates views of mainstream American media had a clear racial subtext, featuring black “crack whores,” “crack babies, and “gangbangers” as the face of the crack crisis. This framing, which continued to dominate mainstream American media for several years, reinforced already prevalent racial stereotypes that painted crack cocaine users and black Americans in general as irresponsible, selfish, and a direct threat to the nation (Alexander, 2012).
Furthermore, the racist foundation of the demonization of drug use is still prevalent today. Doris Marie Provine examines the racial implications of the War on Drugs in the past and present in her book Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs. In particular, she introduces the idea of “racial scapegoating,” a process by which the media appeals to racist attitudes among the general population to generate support for punitive drug policies. The practice seeks to demonize certain substances by deliberately and systematically associate the use of them with people of color so as to create a sense of urgency around outlawing them. While racial scapegoating originated during the Prohibition Era, Provine notes that it has been a prevalent method of issue of framing in many mainstream sources of news throughout American history (Provine, 2007).
Julie Netherland and Helena B Hansen explore a modern-day example of Provine’s argument in “The War on Drugs That Wasn’t: Wasted Whiteness, ‘Dirty Doctors’ and Race in Media Coverage of Prescription Opioid Misuse. They note that while use of opioids and opiates involves several of the same risk factors as crack cocaine use, the media has not painted users of these drugs as criminals or an inherent danger to society. Instead, the media has focused on the role of doctors in providing access to the substances, and paint users as fundamentally good people who have “gone down the wrong path” but can redeem themselves with the help of the public. Netherland and Hansen speculate that the vast difference in media coverage between the opioid epidemic and the crack crisis stem from the public imagination of opioid users as white (Netherland, Hansen, 2016).
Although the Reagan administration cloaked its War on Drugs rhetoric in race-neutral language, the rhetorical framing of the issue reveals that it had intended targeted people of color in America from the beginning. The Reagan administration deliberately appealed to racial tensions that had already been prominent among white Americans to cause a shift in the public perception of drug use and its impact on the nation. In turn, this rhetoric generated widespread support for punitive drug policies that would continue to target racial minorities for decades. Furthermore, the racial implications of drug prohibition remain a vehicle of systematic racism today. The success of this strategy demonstrates the ease with which public leaders and the media can influence the apparent reality of an issue. For this reason, knowledge of the processes by which public narrative develop and awareness of the impact of that framing on drug policy today are crucial in the ongoing fight for racial justice and drug policy reform.
Works Cited
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RACE AND RHETORIC IN REAGAN’S WAR ON DRUGS