As the crack epidemic flooded inner cities across the country, in 1986 Reagan’s “Anti-Drug Abuse Act” makes the penalty for crack possession a hundred times harsher than that of powder cocaine. The following year new legislation is passed allowing private corporations to own and operate prisons. Twenty years later over a million non-violent drug offenders are imprisoned while corporate stocks are traded based on how many prisoners are in the cages.

A report released in 2008 by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London states that the United States has the highest incarceration rate and most people behind bars per capita in the world. Over 50% of these people are imprisoned for drug crimes.

The CIA and Crack Cocaine Epidemic Connection: