30 Years After Basketball Star Len Bias' Death, Its Drug War Impact Endures

Basketball star Len Bias' 1986 cocaine overdose sparked a panic, stoked by false rumors and a high-stakes political campaign that culminated in a law that swept thousands of low-level drug offenders — most of them young and black — into prison.

The All-American forward at the University of Maryland, died on June 19, two days after being drafted by the NBA champion Boston Celtics.

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 established mandatory minimum drug sentences, provisions that exacerbated racial disparities, led to an explosion in prison populations and helped lay the groundwork for grievances that erupted in anti-police riots in Baltimore last year and in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

Thirty years later, on the anniversary of Bias' death, America is still reeling from the impact.

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