Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: belief

Transcript context

…Speaking of policies, the war on drugs. Is it working? Is it racist? Is it wrecking our inner cities? What’s your view? I think the war on drugs was racist. I don’t think it’s the same now. People are starting to see that drug addiction can affect any and everybody. There was an article in the New York Times last week about how now that the scourge of heroin addiction has entered the suburbs and majority-white communities they’re starting to understand what it’s all about. The futility in just using incarceration to try to cure the problem. We have to do a better job teaching people about their self-worth. And we have to do a better job at giving opportunity to people who, if they don’t sell drugs, they can’t participate in any economy. The drug-selling economy is the only one that they can participate in. That’s a recipe for failure. Would you decriminalize and, in essence, stop the war on drugs?…

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