As the Conservatives prepare to re-introduce their law and order agenda, let us bear in mind that the original War on (Some) Drugs™ was a creation of the Reagan administration in the United States. Michelle Alexander in The Nation:
President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon's White House chief of staff: "[T]he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to."
Any number of people have argued — correctly — that the policies Conservatives propose have already been proven failures if the goal is really to reduce crime. That argument doesn't gain any traction with Conservatives because that isn't the goal. The situations in the two countries may not be directly comparable but this is still all about politics.
H/t John Ballard at Newshoggers.
Edited slightly for clarity.
It's also now officially "The War on drugs NOT found in Rahim Jaffer's car." They were going to add "and whatever his wife was on in the PEI airport", but thought that it was too long.
Law & Order coming from a gov who daily disrespects the rule of law, parliament supremacy. Doublespeak.
And to the Con supporters - "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire
I just read a book called "Cops, crime and capitalism : the law and order agenda in Canada" by Todd Gordon. Found it quite interesting. It takes the "law and order" agenda as one of the key supports to neoliberal policies pushing for low wages, high unemployment, lots of part-time work and a "flexible" workforce. When those policies get pushed, two other sets of policies always seem to go with them: Reductions in social programs and the welfare state on one hand, and law-and-order policing on the other. Both are there to ensure that the horrible wages, hours and working conditions on offer are the only game in town--no living on welfare, ideally no taking time out to study, and on the street side no begging, squeegee-ing, prostitution, small-time drug dealing et cetera. Of course, since unemployment is high these things won't actually be stopped as such, but they can be made as uncomfortable as possible and demonized, so that low-wage employers can be sure that no matter how bad the conditions they offer, the marginalized will take the jobs.
It also describes the process of creating immigrants (particularly but not only illegal ones) as an illegitimate group, so they don't get uppity about the crappy jobs they're handed--but never trying to actually get rid of them, because their labour is wanted so long as it remains cheap. It notes for instance that while policing systematically makes existence as an illegal immigrant precarious, police tend to be well aware of the gathering places where illegal immigrants are hired as farm labour, and they never raid them. So they could be deporting illegal immigrants en masse, but they choose not to--the point isn't to not have illegal immigrants, but to keep them scared.
This is why law-and-order agendas always seem to result in so much time spent jailing drug addicts, pushing panhandlers about, and nabbing people for driving while black, and relatively little time spent pursuing violent criminals (let alone white collar ones).
Really, a lot fell into place for me with this book. It also meshed well with another book, "The invention of capitalism : classical political economy and the secret history of primitive accumulation" by Michael Perelman, which details a similar process of making sure the lower classes had no choice but to do wage labour, back in the 18th century. This also involved a law and order agenda. But since lots of the poor in those days hunted, fished and gathered to supplement their income, a good part of the "law and order" agenda that time was about enclosure of commons, private property rights, cracking down on "poaching" and so on. But the urban side was quite similar to the modern day approach, and for similar reasons--would-be employers wanted people who were left with no choice but to go to work for them.