The Suburban Crisis: White America and the War on Drugs 0691177287, 9780691177281
How the drug war transformed American political culture Since the 1950s, the American war on drugs has positioned white
145 97 32MB
English Pages 680 Year 2023
Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
The Drug-War Consensus and the Carceral State
White Drug Crime: Hidden in Plain Sight
Youth Politics and Social Control
The Power and Permanence of Suburban Crisis
Prologue: Los Angeles, 1950–51
1. Pushers and Victims
Producing the White Teenage Narcotics Crisis
California’s Early War on Narcotics
Nationalizing the Suburban Narcotics Crisis
California Drug Enforcement and the Mexican Border
2. Suburban Rebels
Constructing the White Middle-Class Delinquency Epidemic
Sensationalizing and Medicalizing Suburban Drug Crime
Campus Rebels and the Psychedelic Drug Culture
Hippies, Runaways, and Heroin
3. Generation Gap
San Francisco Bay Area: Drug Markets and High School Politics
Suburbs of New York City: Race, Class, and De Facto
Decriminalization
Metropolitan Washington, DC: Diverting the “Normal” Youth Revolt
Metropolitan Los Angeles: Mass Arrests in White Suburbia
Drug Prevention and the “Credibility Gap”
4. Public Enemy Number One
Cruel and Unusual Punishment?
Bipartisan Consensus for Federal Drug Reform
Saving the White Suburban Victim-Criminal
Marijuana, Heroin, and the War on Drugs
“All-Out War, On All Fronts”
5. Impossible Criminals
Marijuana Legalization vs. Decriminalization
State-Level Reform: “Concerned Parents” and “The Wrong Kids”
Marijuana Decriminalization in Oregon
Marijuana Reform and Race in California
The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the “Real Criminals”
6. Parent Power
Marijuana Decriminalization at the Crossroads
The Origins of the “Parents’ Movement”
The Carter Administration’s “Political Powder Keg”
The Demand-Side Drug War
National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free
Youth
7. Zero Tolerance
The Reagan Administration and the “Parents’ Movement”
Marijuana and Alcohol: The Gateway Drugs
“Tough Love” at the Grassroots
Teen Drinking: Get MADD
Crack Cocaine and the Racially Divergent Drug War
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Archives and Abbreviations in Notes
Notes
Index
