Len Bias: NBA draft star and his overdose – death that changed America

The MARILANDA MAIN MEACHER MEDICAL COMPLAINED Death of bias directly cocaine. He said “he interrupted normal electrical control of his heart rate, resulting in a sudden start of attack and heart arrest.”

The subject matters is on the trial on the basis of charges of supplying cocaine that night, but not found guilty.

“I love Lenny bias,” he said in front of the courtroom. “I will always have.”

In 1990. year three years later, the cases would be sentenced to 10 years for a large number of cocaine.

The verdict for the foot was only one of the million in the wider warfare “who dominated the politics of consecutive American governments.

Between 1980. and 2009. year, the adult’s arrest rate for possession or use of drugs increased by 138% in the united states,, external With most increase in the first decade of that 30-year-old period.

The death of bias, at his physical peak, with the future she set in front of him, was part of justifying for sharp penalties for smaller amounts of certain drugs.

“Len bias, he was a man – he was the next superstar,” says historian David Farber, the author of the drug war: history.

“I grew up in Chicago, I grew up with Michael Jordan, but there were people” that he would take Jordan. “There was a fear of bias to go to Celtics, he was good.

“The President of the House of Representatives at his death was O’Neill advice, who could see that there was a medium-term choice found in November 1986. years. Years.

“He realized that a lot of people were terrified that this extraordinary apartment fell into cocaine overdose. O’Neill represented Boston, was a fan of Kelter. It was a really good policy to pay attention to the specificity of the death of Len bias.”

O’Neill, Democrat, realized that his party could not afford to see himself as weak on the question he saw in the psyche of American voters.

“Time magazine and Newsweek were records that middle-class Americans would read at the time. They had mass circulations at this point and began to pump cracks as a new American nightmare,” said Farber.

“The crack was not somewhat white, the middle class and the suburban young men used. But it was great” What if? “.

“The bias did not use the crack, she died of the overdose of cocaine powder, but these are not what people see at the time at all.”

O’Neill was the driving force behind the act of abuse to fight drugs that became draconi the more discussed.

“This account began becoming a war for bidding who could punish drug dealers and drug users more,” Farber explains.

“You usually negotiate – work and capital, they find a way to fight and compromise.

“But there were no negotiations, it was like,” Let’s drop them five years old? No, let’s reject them for 10 years! Let’s reduce the amount of crack that puts you in prison from 100 g to 50 g! “How would it be from 10g?”

“Len Bias was in the center of all this. Here’s this superhero that becomes an emblem about what drug abuse can do the best of us.”

In October 1986. years, just over four months of bias, President Ronald Reagan signed that abuse against drugs act in right in the white house’s east room.

The law set the amounts of certain drugs that would launch prosecution to possess. For crack cocaine, the level is set to 5G. For cocaine powder – a more expensive medicine that killed bias – was set to 500g. The minimum sentence for condemnation in both cases were five years without conditional.

She also set up a minimum 20-year sentence for anyone who was convicted of drugs that caused death or serious injuries.

“This legislation is not designed as a means of filling our prisons with drug users,” Reagan told reporters.

But her effect was just that.

1986. The American prison population stood at 522.064. Ten years later, there were more than 1.1 million., external

“It was just starting to take young people and throws them in a massive number,” said Farber.

“Poor communities – especially poor black communities – they are very affected. The crack was a drug that was adapted to poor people because she was cheap, created really strong and immediately and again and again became re-and again.

“In the United States, we are talking about an awkward state, on the state built around putting people in jail and it begins with hysteria at crack-cocaine.”