ABSTRACT
Jocelyn Elders courageously suggested that the government look at the experience of countries that had decriminalized drugs. The War on Drugs in the United States has produced another war as well: It is a war between the police and minority youth from the ghetto. One need only listen to the words of "gangsta rap" music to get a sense of the hostility, the war mentality that permeates the ghetto. Young black and Latino men living in America's ghettos and barrios are under siege from and at war with the police. One of the more pernicious side effects of the War on Drugs is the growing use of informants who are promised protection from or leniency in sentencing in return for testimony implicating others. Despite spending billions of dollars to fight the War on Drugs and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of young adults, drugs are of higher quality, cheaper, and more readily available than ever.
