The Republican party has been gunning for Hunter Biden, the 52 year old son of president Joe Biden, for years now, trying to link Hunter's legal and personal troubles with his father. While what Hunter has been formally charged with are relatively minor offenses (being late on paying taxes and "illegally owning a gun while a drug user", meaning that he lied about his drug use on a form while purchasing a gun), the accusations have been way over the top. The Republicans have turned a laptop computer that Hunter supposedly once owned into a scandal involving emails on that computer that prove crimes committed by both him and his father. The laptop is currently being held by the FBI, and the fact that its contents haven't been released to the public has allowed congressional Republicans to allege all kinds of malfeasance. The fact that Hunter has admitted to using crack cocaine in the past has fueled many of their allegations, with some right wingers deriding him as a "crackhead."
To me the whole Hunter Biden thing shouldn't be looked at as criminal corruption by the father and son but instead as yet another example of someone from a rich family having a problem with an illegal drug who never faces jail time. In this scandal, Joe Biden comes across as a likable and sympathetic parent who is understandably concerned with his son's addiction. But is it fair that Hunter's problems with crack, which has lasted on and off for decades, is seen by his family as just a problem to be dealt with when so many other families in America have children with similar problems that wind up in jail? Hunter has said that the wealth that his family's position has brought him has been part of the problem for him, with that money, as he put it, allowing him to " spend recklessly, dangerously, destructively. Humiliatingly. So I did." But that wealth also cushioned him, letting him spend time in rehab instead of prison. Putting it bluntly, isn't Hunter Biden a symbol of our country's misguided war on drugs that lets rich people like him avoid punishment while sending poorer people to jail? Especially since his addiction problems have lasted so long and he has relapsed several times?
To put it in perspective, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, there are currently 350,000 Americans incarcerated for illegal drug use. A large number of them are nonviolent consenting adults who have been locked up for a crime that threatened no one but themselves. In other words, people who are no more criminals than Hunter Biden is, but who are not lucky enough to have a wealthy family that pay for their trips to rehab. And let's face it, they are also disproportionately poor people and people of color who have been targeted by police and who will, even when they get out of jail, be consigned to worse living and job opportunities because of their criminal record. Or, as the rapper Boots Riley once put it, "Is there a war on drugs, or just a war on my community?".
Of course, I have no personal animosity towards Hunter Biden, I wish him well and hope that he recovers, just as I hope the same thing for all people who struggle with addiction. But it does bother me that his wealth and privilege have cloaked him from facing the same consequences that so many people who aren't lucky enough to have been born rich face in this country. We need to stop treating drug addicts like criminals and start treating them like alcoholics in this country, which getting them help instead of jailing them.
