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The Pros And Cons Of Punishment

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How would you feel if you could not vote because you were labeled as a criminal for a minor crime? How would you feel if you could not get a job since you are labeled as a criminal? There are many African Americans that know exactly how this feels, because they have gone through this. They have gone through this because of some terrible decisions made by the United States government. This small offense they have committed is only drug possession. Yes they were breaking the law, but does the punishment really fit the crime. No it does not! Especially when others are not getting as harsh of punishments when they are caught with a different type of drug. Something is not adding up here, and it is pretty clear what it is. Someone wanted to get rid of the African Americans to help him win a presidential …show more content…
There needs to be a change in our laws over voting and the harshness of drug punishments, and this change needs to happen fast in order to give these people their right back quickly. This whole ordeal started way back with Richard Nixon and his War on drugs that he proposed (13th). He had two enemies that he needed to get rid of in order to win the presidential election, and they were the African Americans and the hippies (A Brief History of The War on Drugs). So what does he decide to do about it? Nixon thought it would be a great idea to heavily criminalize two drugs, marijuana and crack cocaine (Norman). At the time crack cocaine was really big in African American communities, and marijuana a major drug that was associated with hippies (Jaeger). This absolutely devastated these two communities (Thirty Years of America’s Drug War.). African American men were being torn away from their loving families just so Nixon could become President of the United

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