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Drugs And Violence, Shima Baradaran

Shima Baradaran

The war on drugs has increased the United States prison population by tenfold. The foundation for the war on drugs and unparalleled increase in prisoners rely on the premise that drugs and violence are linked. Politicians, media, and scholars continue to advocate this view either explicitly or implicitly. This Article identifies the pervasiveness of this premise, and debunks the link between drugs and violence. It demonstrates that a connection between drugs and violence is not supported by historical arrest data, current research, or independent empirical evidence. That there is little evidence to support the assumption that drugs cause violence is …