“On Sept. 5, 1989, US president George H.W. Bush made a televised speech from the Oval Office announcing his administration’s escalation of the so-called “War on Drugs.” To illustrate the gravity of situation, Bush held up a bag of crack cocaine on live TV—drugs purchased, he told viewers, just steps from the White House where he now sat.”
“To supply the locally sourced crack, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration had to lure a dealer to a part of Washington well outside his usual territory. Agents decided upon Keith Jackson, an 18-year-old high-school senior who had never ventured to Bush’s neighborhood before.”
“Jackson was later sentenced to 10 years for this first offense, a sentence reluctantly imposed by US District Judge Stanley Sporkin, who by that time was forced to work off of mandatory minimum sentencing laws passed by Congress in 1988 as part of the War on Drugs.”