Beginning with the personal story of Nannie Jeter, the
Jarecki family’s housekeeper and friend, The
House I Live In explores the destructive nature of drugs on both an
intimate and national level. It is a subject matter defined by its capability
to ruin the lives of those who have been unfortunate enough to become embroiled
in it. In this documentary, Jarecki gives voice to not only the academics that
have spent their lives researching the war on drugs, but the judges, police
officers, drug dealers and users that have been central to it. Early in the
film the writer of The Wire, David
Simon, pithily addresses Jarecki’s central message: ‘what drugs haven’t
destroyed, the war on drugs has.’ It is this destruction that Jarecki seeks to
attack, confronting the way in which the war on the drugs has failed all those involved
in it. Initially, the oppressive rhetoric was deployed by Richard Nixon in 1971
with the intention of gaining votes for the upcoming election. Forty years
later, Jarecki shows how the so-called war on drugs remains fundamentally
rooted in gain, both political and monetary, and not, in fact, in reducing the
damaging effects of drugs. The result of this exploitation is what David Simon,
who proves an eloquent and knowledgeable speaker, compellingly describes as ‘a
holocaust in slow-motion’, were the victims are the lower classes that find
themselves confined by the hermetic nature of America’s drug policy.
In an interview promoting the film in Los Angeles, Brad Pitt,
who shares producer credits with Russell Simmons, John Legend and Danny Glover,
described the war on drugs as ‘a charade.’ Looking at the overwhelming amount
of money that has been spent, and more startlingly the lack of progress that
has been achieved, it would be difficult to argue against him. In the forty
years since Nixon waged an unrelenting attack on drugs, one that has cost one
trillion dollars and has seen forty-five million arrests, nothing has changed.
In reality, Jarecki suggests that ‘drugs are cheaper, purer, more available
than ever before…and we have the
largest prison population in the world.’ The documentary begs the question
then: who exactly does the war on drugs serve? It evidently isn’t drug users,
who are treated and sentenced as severely as murderers for an offence which
many speakers in the film suggest should be treated as a public health issue,
not a criminal one. Interviews with depleted police officers also reveal that
the war isn’t serving their interests, with any faith in the strategy’s ability
to take drugs off of the streets fading further the longer it goes on. The true
benefactor, the documentary argues, is the capitalist system upon which America
has laid its foundations. Since 1971, the number of offenders imprisoned for
drug charges has increased twelvefold, yet illegal drug use continues to
flourish. As a result, there is a wealth of potential prisoners waiting to serve
their role in increasing the profits of the vast amount of corporations,
ranging from private Taser gun manufacturers to phone companies, which have
been built on the incredibly lucrative prison market.
Ultimately, David Simon acknowledges, ‘capitalism is fairly
colour-blind’. Towards the film’s conclusion, Jarecki reveals how increasing
numbers of white Americans, largely due to the emergence of methamphetamine,
are being exposed to the stern and rigid drug sentences that have crippled
black communities for decades. The link between the two communities and their
fall into drug use is explicitly exposed in the film as a shared feeling of
dejection. With no prospects, no future, and no income, drug dealing and drug
use offers escape to lower class Americans that are struggling to find any existential
meaning in their lives. By weaving in Nannie’s personal story of loss and
frustration amidst the powerful polemic against the war on drugs, Jarecki
delivers a thesis regarding the ineptitude of America’s drug policy that is
certain to provoke thought. This is undoubtedly what the filmmaker has set out
to do: expose the injustices of a futile system that has been operating for so
long, and with such damaging effects, under the pretence of ridding America of
a drug problem that has done nothing but grow.
