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The War on Drugs at the Mall: Anti-Drug Campaigns in Shopping Centers during the Reagan Administration
Krueger, Jessica
Krueger, Jessica
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Conference paper
Date
2025-03-15
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History
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.34944/z79f-e168
Abstract
While the Reagan Administration revived and expanded the United States' war on drugs with increased funding, harsher sentencing, and community-based preventative measures, shopping centers proliferated across the nation. As news outlets warned of nonwhite drug pushers and urban "blight," white middle-class populations flocked to shopping centers, protected as they were alleged to be from the supposed ills of modern society. Using collections housed in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library archives, I examine the efforts of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), with Melvin Sembler as its president, to involve the shopping center industry in the ongoing drug crusade with an anti-drug campaign of their own called “Kids Say Know.” I argue that, in collaboration with the Reagan Administration and under the chief directive of Sembler, the ICSC endorsed shopping centers as a heroic enterprise against, and the activity of shopping as a moral alternative to, drug use. I argue further that the ICSC's Kids Say Know anti-drug campaign functioned to reinforce shopping centers as a white, segregated space. Lastly, I contend that the decision of Sembler and the ICSC to involve the shopping center industry in the ongoing anti-drug crusade was motivated at least in part by concerns over revenue loss.
Description
A paper presented at the 30th James A. Barnes Graduate History Conference, which took place March 14-15, 2025 in Philadelphia, PA.
Citation
Krueger, J. "The War on Drugs at the Mall: Anti-Drug Campaigns in Shopping Centers during the Reagan Administration." Paper presented at 30th James A. Barnes Graduate History Conference, Philadelphia, PA, March 2025.
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