I wouldn't characterize this as a right/left issue at all. I have, I think, more perspective on it than some because I lived through the era. I personally thought the policies were wrong and misguided, and I viewed them as a de facto war on minorities trying to impose a law enforcement solution on broader complex social problems. But there was no denying that there was a public outcry for government to do something and that some of the outcry came from minorities themselves. There was also no denying that drugs were causing huge social problems including some rampant and senseless violence. There was real fear out there which was not entirely unjustified.
Unfortunately, politicians took the easy way out rather than actually trying to do something about the hollowing out of the economy which was taking place as deindustrialization hit urban areas hard in the 1980s and 1990s. What we are seeing today is the same phenomenon hitting the suburbs and rural areas as their economies are hollowing out due to globalization and the result is the opioid crisis, which is getting a more sympathetic hearing because, frankly, its victims are white and born in the United States. I'm not singling out the Republicans, by the way. The Democrats had just as big a hand in the 80s and 90s in setting drug and criminal justice policy (Joe Biden wrote the 1994 drug legislation) and are now also changing their tune as the demographics of drug addiction change. This is, by the way, a good thing. The policies of the 80s and 90s did little to solve actual problems. There is, in fact, a study out there (too lazy to look it up right now) that makes a good case that much of the violence of the 80s and 90s could in fact be traced not to drugs at all but to environmental lead and what caused the drop in violent crime after that period was environmental regulation that took lead out of the living environment of children.