Why is the connection between drug laws and americas police shooting problem never made?

[LucidSDreamr]

As we all know america has by an extreme Longshot the largest amount of police killings of citizens of any "1st world" (i use that term lightly for america). America is the only European or Asian country (except Phillipines and some Middle Eastern warscapes) that is in the top 10. We rank number 6. The only countries with more police killings of citizens are Brazil, Venezuela, Phillipines, India, and Syria.


It seems like 95% of these unjustified or even justified police shootings all involve drugs. Someone being pulled over foe drugs, searched foe drugs, someone selling drugs, car smells like weed etc.

The media and public males ZERO connection that all of these shootings are tied to drug law and tries to pin the entire thing on race as just a racial genoicide.. whether it's a racial genocide or not...it's obvious drug laws are being used as the excise to initiate all of these police confrontations that result in shootings.

Why does the media totally ignore the drug law aspect and they just male only about race while ignoring the very toool being wielded against the race (the drug laws).

 

[Burnt Offerings]

I know what you mean and I've often thought the same thing. It seems like various aspects of the drug war underpin so many policy failures in this country, from mass incarceration to police shootings to surging overdose deaths etc, but a really well-informed holistic critique often seems absent from the conversation. Instead it often gets bogged down in a discussion over racial categories...I mean yeah, racism is a factor...the legacy of slavery led to the legacy of segregation, which then led to the ongoing legacy of the "war on drugs" beginning in the early 70s, and now here we are today...but "race" is far from the only factor in the story, there's also socioeconomic/class dimensions, foreign policy dimensions, dimensions related to civil society/civil liberties overall, all kinds of dark side roads you can go down in the disastrous story of the "war on drugs" over the past 50 years