Supply Side

This chapter describes how America was in “full fury” over drugs with the alleged crack epidemic when George H. W. Bush took office on January 20, 1989. It talks about how Bush took to network television to warn the American public of the national emergency of drugs, using a bag of crack that the Drug Enforcement Administration had managed to purchase near the White House as a prop. It also refers to “drug czar” William Bennett, who echoed Progressive-era reformers in framing the question about substance use in terms of American moral identity and contended that drugs represented a crisis of national character. The chapter cites the late 1980s and early 1990s as the period in which the United States most forcefully brought the drug war to source countries, aiming to cease the operation of poppy, coca, and cannabis fields in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Mexico. It elaborates Bush's support in taking military action in other countries to interrupt drug production.