During his tenure in office, Ronald Reagan mounted a punitive war against drug use in the United States. This crusade included the vast sentencing discrepancy between powder and crack cocaine, which is the focus of this study. Despite their identical chemical makeup, it took 500 grams of powder cocaine to warrant a minimum five-year sentence and only five grams of crack cocaine to trigger the same sentence. Misconceived notions that crack cocaine was instantly additive, incited violence among its users, and preyed disproportionally on the young and poor drove politicians to set mandatory minimums for crack cocaine 100 times harsher than powder cocaine. Lawmakers assumed drug criminals contained an innate deviance or criminality, which drove them to their drug use, justifying these harsh penalties and the lack of empathy extended to these so-called criminals. However, an examination of psychological studies on drug use and abuse reveal that emotional deregulation and trauma are common predictors of drug abuse. Interviews with incarcerated women underscore these findings, as many of these women—convicted of non-violent drug crimes—identify their use of drugs as a coping mechanism rather than an exercise in social deviance. Using psychological and sociological studies in conjuncture with testimonies of incarcerated women, this study seeks to combat these notions held by lawmakers to demonstrate the inherent flaws of Reagan's drug war. Similarly, this study looks to rap lyrics of the 1980 and1990s as a cultural lens into the communities most negatively affected by the drug war. In tracing the cultural history of these communities, the necessity of this study is revealed as it exposes the human casualties of the drug war. The choice to highlight crack cocaine sentencing rather than examine the war on drugs writ large is done to examine the deliberations and choices of lawmakers in their policy decisions and attempt to locate culpability for the mass incarceration crisis. Doing so reveals that biased police practices more so than the laws the enforce are responsible for the disproportionate number of incarcerate Black Americans; law enforcement officials, however, cannot be held fully responsible as President Reagan, Clinton, and Congress all worked dutifully to ensure that individuals convicted of drug crimes remained in prison for years on end rather than enter into treatment programs
