THE rapper and former drug dealer made the comments in the narration for a New York Times short film about the legal and social ramifications from the crackdown on illegal drugs in NYC from the ’80s to today.

    The New York Times recruited Jay Z to write and narrate their new short film, “A History on the War of Drugs: From Prohibition to the Gold Rush.” Set to vivid illustrations by artist Molly Crabapple of the legal and social ramifications of the war on drugs in New York City from the late 1980s to present day, the film shows the harsh realities and double standards that exist for drug dealers, especially those of color, and white entrepreneurs getting rich off today’s growing marijuana business.

    “In 1986, when I was coming of age, Ronald Reagan doubled down on the war on drugs that had been started by Richard Nixon in 1971,” Jay Z says in the film, touching on the Nixon administration and Rockefeller laws. “Drugs were bad, fried your brain, and drug dealers were monsters — the sole reason neighborhoods and major cities were failing.” Dream Hampton, filmmaker and co-author of Jay Z’s book, “Decoded,” set the project in motion when the social agency he works with, Revolve Impact, sought to tackle the contradictions presented in Michelle Alexander’s 2014 book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” by illustrating the effect the war of drugs has had in African-American communities.

    In the film the hip-hop mogul — who has been criticized for rapping about his drug-dealing past — criticizes the discrimination against men of color who push drugs. “Young men who hustled like me became the sole villain and drug addicts lacked moral fortitude,” he says. He goes on to reveal how in the 1990s, incarceration rates in the United States were at an all-time high, “more than any country in the world.”

    Judges were dishing out life sentences on grounds of possession and low-level drug sales, Jay Z continues. “Even though white people sold and used crack more than black people, somehow it was black people who went to prison,” he says. “The media ignore actual data to this day. Crack is still talked about as a black problem.”

    Jay Z, who has rapped about getting high on songs like “Allure,” issues a call for action. “Forty-five years later, it’s time to rethink our policies and laws. The war on drugs is an epic fail,” he says.(SD-Agencies)