NCJ Number
184236
Journal
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice Volume: 16 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2000 Pages: 247-271
Date Published
August 2000
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This analysis of the rhetoric used in the National Drug Control Strategy reports concludes that the drug war is something akin to a politically expedient and gentlemanly truncheon rather than a necessary and pragmatic response to a social crisis or an attempt to defend and even enhance democracy.
Abstract
The reports outline President Clinton’s strategies for winning what is called the war on drugs. Analyzing the arguments used in the reports aids understanding of the government’s understanding of the relationships among drugs, violence, race, crime, and democracy. Situating the critique of the drug war in a historically based analysis of the relationships among law, power, and force suggests the usefulness of examining Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars and Aristotle’s Nicohmachean Ethics. These writers emphasize the concept of a nauseous pendulum that swings between reason and violence. Considering the drug war in relationship to Thucydides and Aristotle bolsters the thesis that the contemporary means of producing power via reasonable political discourse that serves as the veneer on government-sanctioned violence is not a necessarily abhorrent form of hypocrisy; instead, it is one of the basic traditions of law itself. 60 references (Author abstract modified)