Gary Webb Was Right

I don’t know how old you are, but if you were a sentient human being living in the United States during the 1980’s, then you know that the crack cocaine epidemic in our cities was a much bigger problem than the Sandanistas. I challenge anyone to dispute that.

And the bottom line is that Gary Webb was right and our government was completely complicit in allowing crack cocaine to be imported into the this country so that some of the proceeds from the sales could be used to fund the Contras who were fighting the Sandanista government in Nicaragua.

The idea was not to decimate the black community, but that was the effect. And the fallout was immeasurably worse because of the draconian sentencing laws that were passed in the 1970’s and 1980’s which filled our prisons with low-level drug offenders and turned hundreds of thousands of petty criminals into convicted felons, with all the loss of job opportunity and voting rights that that entails.

So, let me ask you a question. How angry are we entitled to be about this?

Author: BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.