JAY Z KEEPS IT REAL ABOUT AMERICA'S "WAR ON DRUGS"

Jay Z has narrated a powerful video piece for today's Opinion section of The New York Times regarding America's multi-decade "War on Drugs," calling it an "epic fail" that ignores every aspect of treating addictions to harder drugs, and is woefully obsolete in light of states like Colorado and Oregon legalizing marijuana entirely.

Called A History of the War on Drugs from Prohibition to Gold Rush, this sobering four-minute U.S. history lesson also features illustrations from artist Molly Crabapple.

The timeline begins in 1986, "when I was coming of age, Ronald Reagan doubled down on the war on drugs," Jay begins, "no one wanted to talk about Reaganomics and the ending of social safety nets, the de-funding of schools and the loss of jobs in cities across America."

The piece goes on to chronicle the exploding incarceration rates of the 1990s and the pattern of mass incarceration that disproportionately caused three times the amount of African Americans and Latinos in poor neighborhoods to be jailed under these "War on Drug" laws compared to their white Wall Street counterparts, who were using the exact same drugs.

America currently imprisons more people than China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba. "All countries we consider autocratic, and oppressive," Jay Z notes, "our prison population grew by more than 900%."

Check out the full video here.

Jay Z is right: We have to end the war on drugs. https://t.co/cWPQw8X7aN
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 15, 2016