Mandatory Minimums, Maximum Damage

The War on Drugs

In the wake of college basketball star Len Bias’s death from a cocaine overdose, Congressional Democrats sought to retake the Senate by portraying themselves as tough on drugs. What resulted was one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in the entire history of the War on Drugs, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Among its key provisions was the introduction of federal mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offenses. The result was generations of men and women, disproportionately from minority communities, lost to over incarceration.

Clayton and Greg talk with Eric Sterling, the special counsel to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary from 1979-1989, who helped write the mandatory minimum sentencing laws that were part of the legislation. Clayton and Greg also talk with Eric about a little-known figure in the War on Drugs, a D.C. police officer who served as a chief investigator for Congress before he was discredited for perjuring himself hundreds of times as a government witness.

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