Reclaiming ‘The House I Live In’: Fighting Back Against the War on Drugs

Despite fallout from Americas war on drugs being the reason why he wanted to make his new documentary film, director Eugene Jarecki wasnt originally planning to include himself in The House I Live In. But in recounting the ongoing drug wars history of calamitous effects on all Americans, the acclaimed director of Why We Fight, a 2006 documentary that dissected Americas military-industrial complex, realized he couldnt exclude the drug wars impact on him.

I was afraid of putting myself in the way, taking away screentime from incredibly sensitive and valuable lives, Jarecki tells TakePart. It is a movie about many, many people all across America, all walks of life who suffer and are victims of the drug war whether theyre in law enforcement or theyre locked upall the victims who have been touched by the drug war and its bankrupt morality.

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Urged on by his friend Harry Belafonte, who saw an early cut of The House I Live In, Jarecki began his film with the story of Nannie Jeter, his African-American caretaker.

Caught in the trap of financially supporting her own children while not being able to stay at home with them, Jeter could only watch on as her son James fell prey to drug abuse. Sadly, this was not a situation unique to Jeter. She saw relatives incarcerated for and killed by drugs.

All that does is say to them, Look, I see your pain and recognize it, but instead of showing compassion for your illness, I'm going to ratchet it up.

The film shows the drug war as particularly devastating to African Americans in particular. Government policies and law-enforcment practices create a perpetual cycle of socioeconomic stagnation that profits only the agencies making arrests and the corporations building prisons to house the people arrested.

We dont treat [addicts] as people who have a public health problem, says Jarecki. We treat them instead as villains, as somebody we need to target and lock them up and throw away the key. And of course, all that does is it says to them, Look, I see your pain and recognize it, but instead of showing compassion for your illness, I'm going to ratchet it up.

Jarecki is using The House I Live In, which won the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, to fight back against the war on drugs.

Americas current militarized approach to a public health issue started with Richard Nixons 1971 official declaration of a war on drugs, and has been ratcheted up by the presidential administrations that followed. The House I Live In offers up a clear recitation of facts (45 million arrests at a cost of a trillion dollars) and presents experts from both sides of the current laws to demonstrate why they havent worked.

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Reclaiming ‘The House I Live In’: Fighting Back Against the War on Drugs