Are Drug Laws Racist?
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A 2001 article by Reuters said the following:
In a petition to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the signatories said the US war on drugs was “not a war on plants and chemicals, but on citizens and other human beings who all too often are members of racial and ethnic minorities.”
Whites use as many drugs as Latinos and African Americans.
But among those incarcerated for drug offenses in the United States, 57 percent are black and 22 percent are Hispanic — partly because the drugs they use, such as “crack” cocaine carry tougher sentences, the letter said.
“The war on drugs is rooted in racial bias,” it charged.
I am very familiar with the line “partly because the drugs they use, such as “crack” cocaine carry tougher sentences.” I read in a new edition of the Text book, Social Problems by D. Stanley Eitzen, Maxine Baca Zinn, and Kelly E. Eitzen Smith, the same line, almost verbatim. This, however, is specious thinking. Search for the words “crack laws” and you will get a litany of sites that read such things as:Crack Cocaine Sentencing Policy: Unjustified and Unreasonable, and Crack laws have been challenged on several levels as “cruel and unusual” and racially biased.
The point is missed. If anything these laws are the polar opposite of racist. Crack was destroying the inner cities in the mid 80’s to mid 90’s.
Between 1984 and 1994, the homicide rate for black males aged 14 to 17 more than doubled, and the homicide rate for black males aged 18 to 24 increased nearly as much. During this period, the black community also experienced an increase in fetal death rates, low birth-weight babies, weapons arrests, and the number of children in foster care.” (source: How bad was Crack Cocaine? The Economics of an Illicit Drug Market. Researched by Steven D. Levitt and Kevin M. Murphy )
When lawmakers saw figures like those above they tried to stop it, the only way they could:stricter laws. College professors will attempt to redirect the weak minds of students, but if you take two seconds to ask “why,” you will see the truth. The problem is most people don’t ask “why.” They see larger numbers of minorities in jail for drug offenses and claim racism…if only they took a second to think about why those laws were enacted (think again about the 50% increase in homicides,) they might think “it’s not racist to want people to stop killing each other.”
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Drug Laws are not racist, and the only ones who think that they are - are the ones who have no knowledge as to why they are carried out; or, they have only heard of what the purpose is based on (missing) information; they never received the full and complete lesson on the topic at hand. Or, most have been taught in school early on that if you answer the fastest then you are a good student; but if you answer with some investigation;careful lines of reasoning on the topic, you will not pass or do well. So, that attitude is carried on over throughout their whole life.
I remember in the 80’s when crack was the biggest thing around where I lived in Brooklyn NY. You could find those plastic crack capsules all over the place; and it seemed that the whole neighborhood was filled with people using 24/7. Now, I use this as an example because Brooklyn was a huge melting pot of all cultures and nationalities; and if you looked very closely at the police activity, you would see that they were not arresting the drug crack per se; nor were they arresting the drug users per se as well; but you would see that they were most definitely arresting the behaviors that were causing many many gang wars, baby deaths, constant shootings, they were not arresting the drug nor the personality or race. They were arresting the behavior of anyone that was using (regardless of what color your skin or language you spoke.)
And these cops were busy people at that time. They had no time to build up there own personal reasons for doing what they were doing.
They were on watch = they spotted drug induced people = they arrested them = they went to jail (didn’t matter what color your skin)
Does that mean that everyone who used crack would go to jail? No.
Does everyone who drinks alcohol go to jail? No.
But [if] the behavior of the user (crack, alcohol, etc) displayed signs of danger to themselves or others - they were getting cuffed and sent to Rikers Island lockup. If they were at home using (regardless of who they were) their chances of not being arrested were better.
So, basically, the enforcers are more interested in the behavior of the person then of their position in life.
If this was going on at the wall street stock market you can bet your butt that the cops were tearing up some Armani suits but they were not throwing cuffs on the crack rocks.