ABSTRACT
The dominant methods of drug law enforcement in the US support surveillance, police brutality and violence, racial profiling and discrimination, and mass incarceration. These problems relate to punitive drug control policies and military-style policing practices – commonly known as the War on Drugs. However, drug policy continues to elicit contestation. A host of conflicting narratives and perspectives about the purpose and impacts of drug law enforcement, and even why such reforms are essential, sit just beneath the surface of this seeming consensus. Accordingly, the motivations and consequences of our drug prohibition policies and practices are frequent topics of discussion in print and digital media. These public discussions make up the War on Drugs debate. This introductory chapter covers the history and features of the War on Drugs and the public debate that has surrounded it. Moreover, I discuss what it means to approach these topics from a sociological perspective centering on racial politics and media and issues of identity, oppression, and inequality. I also introduce the data and methods that make up the core findings of this study, which focuses on identifying patterns in how newspapers and digital news comment sections frame arguments about the War on Drugs.
