Modern Day Slavery
- Thread starter Sergeant Hustle
- Start date
ey.........
Only problem with sergeant hustles' complaint about being put in with hardcore criminals is,alot of them fools sellin' drugs could be hardened criminals that have killed people and not got caught...or shot or stabbed folks and got away with it...i read in the paper once and this is only speaking on SEATTLE,48% of the killers dont get caught,aint that some shit????Damn near half the murderers.So you might happen across murderous drug dealers or violent drug dealers no matter what cell block or seperate facility......the people who run the prison wouldnt have any definite info on ANYBODY but the fools who got caught...so when fools get caught for selling federal ammounts of dope...plan on being stuck in there with alll sorts of criminals of every kind.
Only problem with sergeant hustles' complaint about being put in with hardcore criminals is,alot of them fools sellin' drugs could be hardened criminals that have killed people and not got caught...or shot or stabbed folks and got away with it...i read in the paper once and this is only speaking on SEATTLE,48% of the killers dont get caught,aint that some shit????Damn near half the murderers.So you might happen across murderous drug dealers or violent drug dealers no matter what cell block or seperate facility......the people who run the prison wouldnt have any definite info on ANYBODY but the fools who got caught...so when fools get caught for selling federal ammounts of dope...plan on being stuck in there with alll sorts of criminals of every kind.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/060800-01.htm
Published on Thursday, June 8, 2000 in the Los Angeles Times
'Prejudice & Punishment':
Blacks Unfairly Targeted In 'War on Drugs'
by Jesse Katz
Charging that the war on drugs has been waged disproportionately against blacks, Human Rights Watch today will release a report showing that 482 of every 100,000 African American men are in prison for a drug crime, compared with just 36 of every 100,000 white men.
The study, titled "Punishment and Prejudice," also found that blacks make up 62% of the nation's imprisoned drug offenders, despite accounting for just 13% of the population. In half a dozen states, the disparity is even greater, with blacks comprising 80% to 90% of all drug convicts behind bars. In every state, they are more likely than white men to be incarcerated for such crimes--from North Dakota, where the odds are double, to Illinois, where the ratio is 57 to 1.
"These racial disparities are a national scandal," said Ken Roth, executive director of the New York-based watchdog organization, which touted the report as the first state-by-state analysis of its kind. "Black and white drug offenders get radically different treatment in the American justice system. This is not only profoundly unfair to blacks, it also corrodes the American ideal of equal justice for all."
The report, funded by billionaire investor George Soros' Open Society Institute, adds to the already bleak statistical portrait of inner-city America, which has served as the drug war's front line. But as with similar studies, its interpretation--and the appropriate target for outrage--is a matter of considerable debate.
Cost of Prison 'Cure' Seen High
To Human Rights Watch associate counsel Jamie Fellner, who authored the report, the numbers paint a "devastating picture of the price black Americans have paid" for the country's failed battle to control illicit drugs. "While drug abuse and drug trafficking warrant concerted national efforts," she wrote, "it may be that the human, social and economic cost of the prison 'cure' is worse than the 'disease' itself."
Conservatives, however, derided those conclusions as "inflammatory," arguing that racially distinct outcomes, in and of themselves, are not evidence of racially biased policies. "There will be inevitably, inherently, disparities of all sorts in the enforcement of any kind of law," said Todd Gaziano, a senior fellow in legal studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "I'm sure you can find disparity among racial groups as to whether their ZIP Codes end in odd or even numbers. It doesn't prove anything."
Because the illegal drug trade tends to flourish in economically depressed communities, conservatives contend, it may be that blacks simply commit more drug crimes than whites--or, at least, the kind of drug crimes that are more likely to result in a prison term. If that is the case, they say, then inner-city black neighborhoods are the ones that most benefit from putting drug offenders behind bars.
"Why on Earth are people who claim to be civil rights advocates defending the predators in these communities?" asked David Horowitz, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the author of "Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes."
The answer from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) is that a black teenager standing on a corner with a baggie of crack should be viewed as a scapegoat, not a villain. He provides a convenient target for law enforcement, "but a 19-year-old, low-level drug dealer in South-Central L.A. is not responsible for the devastation of the community."
Rather, Waters believes outrage--and prison time--should be reserved for those who allow international traffickers to move their drugs and money in and out of the U.S. As an example, Waters pointed to a recent Senate investigation that rebuked Citibank for helping the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari transfer tens of millions of dollars in alleged drug profits out of his country, a case that resulted in no charges of wrongdoing against the banking conglomerate.
"Blacks get treated differently," she said.
Situation for Blacks Called Catastrophic
The numbers contained in the Human Rights Watch report, regardless of politics, describe a catastrophic situation for black America. Relying on 1996 prison admission data from the National Corrections Reporting Program, the study for the first time calculated per capita incarceration rates for drug offenders in the 37 states that participated.
Illinois topped the list, with 1,146 of every 100,000 black men (compared with just 20 of every 100,000 white men) in prison for a drug offense. Ohio followed, with a rate of 968, then Kentucky, at 869. The report compared those numbers with the rates for white men and ranked the states according to the degree of racial disparity. Illinois again led, with blacks 57 times more likely than whites to be incarcerated for drug crimes. Wisconsin followed, with a 54-to-1 ratio, then Minnesota, at 39 to 1.
California's per capita rate for black drug offenders--669 of every 100,000--was the nation's seventh highest. But because California's total black population is smaller than that of many Southern and Northeastern states, the disparity with whites was among the lowest; even so, African American drug offenders here are five times more likely than whites to land in prison.
The report offered no explanation for any state's ranking, and few states were volunteering an opinion. "I'm reluctant to draw any conclusions based on a report that's a mystery to me," said a spokesman for Illinois Gov. George Ryan.
Human Rights Watch, whose stated goal is to make governments around the world "pay a heavy price in reputation and legitimacy if they violate the rights of their people," concludes with several policy recommendations:
* Repeal mandatory minimum sentences;
* Increase the availability of drug treatment;
* Eliminate racial profiling.
"If this were happening to whites," Fellner said, "the policies would change."
* * *
Racial Disparity
States in which blacks comprise the highest percentage of imprisoned drug offenders:
1. Maryland: 90%
2. Illinois: 90%
3. South Carolina: 86%
4. North Carolina: 84%
5. Louisiana: 82%
* * *
California: 30%
U.S. average: 62%
* * *
States that have the most disparate ratios between black and white men imprisoned for drug crimes:
1. Illinois: 57:1
2. Wisconsin: 54:1
3. Minnesota: 39:1
4. Maine: 36:1
5. Iowa: 29:1
* * *
California: 5:1
U.S. average: 13:1
* * *
Source: Human Rights Watch
Published on Thursday, June 8, 2000 in the Los Angeles Times
'Prejudice & Punishment':
Blacks Unfairly Targeted In 'War on Drugs'
by Jesse Katz
Charging that the war on drugs has been waged disproportionately against blacks, Human Rights Watch today will release a report showing that 482 of every 100,000 African American men are in prison for a drug crime, compared with just 36 of every 100,000 white men.
The study, titled "Punishment and Prejudice," also found that blacks make up 62% of the nation's imprisoned drug offenders, despite accounting for just 13% of the population. In half a dozen states, the disparity is even greater, with blacks comprising 80% to 90% of all drug convicts behind bars. In every state, they are more likely than white men to be incarcerated for such crimes--from North Dakota, where the odds are double, to Illinois, where the ratio is 57 to 1.
"These racial disparities are a national scandal," said Ken Roth, executive director of the New York-based watchdog organization, which touted the report as the first state-by-state analysis of its kind. "Black and white drug offenders get radically different treatment in the American justice system. This is not only profoundly unfair to blacks, it also corrodes the American ideal of equal justice for all."
The report, funded by billionaire investor George Soros' Open Society Institute, adds to the already bleak statistical portrait of inner-city America, which has served as the drug war's front line. But as with similar studies, its interpretation--and the appropriate target for outrage--is a matter of considerable debate.
Cost of Prison 'Cure' Seen High
To Human Rights Watch associate counsel Jamie Fellner, who authored the report, the numbers paint a "devastating picture of the price black Americans have paid" for the country's failed battle to control illicit drugs. "While drug abuse and drug trafficking warrant concerted national efforts," she wrote, "it may be that the human, social and economic cost of the prison 'cure' is worse than the 'disease' itself."
Conservatives, however, derided those conclusions as "inflammatory," arguing that racially distinct outcomes, in and of themselves, are not evidence of racially biased policies. "There will be inevitably, inherently, disparities of all sorts in the enforcement of any kind of law," said Todd Gaziano, a senior fellow in legal studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "I'm sure you can find disparity among racial groups as to whether their ZIP Codes end in odd or even numbers. It doesn't prove anything."
Because the illegal drug trade tends to flourish in economically depressed communities, conservatives contend, it may be that blacks simply commit more drug crimes than whites--or, at least, the kind of drug crimes that are more likely to result in a prison term. If that is the case, they say, then inner-city black neighborhoods are the ones that most benefit from putting drug offenders behind bars.
"Why on Earth are people who claim to be civil rights advocates defending the predators in these communities?" asked David Horowitz, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the author of "Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes."
The answer from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) is that a black teenager standing on a corner with a baggie of crack should be viewed as a scapegoat, not a villain. He provides a convenient target for law enforcement, "but a 19-year-old, low-level drug dealer in South-Central L.A. is not responsible for the devastation of the community."
Rather, Waters believes outrage--and prison time--should be reserved for those who allow international traffickers to move their drugs and money in and out of the U.S. As an example, Waters pointed to a recent Senate investigation that rebuked Citibank for helping the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari transfer tens of millions of dollars in alleged drug profits out of his country, a case that resulted in no charges of wrongdoing against the banking conglomerate.
"Blacks get treated differently," she said.
Situation for Blacks Called Catastrophic
The numbers contained in the Human Rights Watch report, regardless of politics, describe a catastrophic situation for black America. Relying on 1996 prison admission data from the National Corrections Reporting Program, the study for the first time calculated per capita incarceration rates for drug offenders in the 37 states that participated.
Illinois topped the list, with 1,146 of every 100,000 black men (compared with just 20 of every 100,000 white men) in prison for a drug offense. Ohio followed, with a rate of 968, then Kentucky, at 869. The report compared those numbers with the rates for white men and ranked the states according to the degree of racial disparity. Illinois again led, with blacks 57 times more likely than whites to be incarcerated for drug crimes. Wisconsin followed, with a 54-to-1 ratio, then Minnesota, at 39 to 1.
California's per capita rate for black drug offenders--669 of every 100,000--was the nation's seventh highest. But because California's total black population is smaller than that of many Southern and Northeastern states, the disparity with whites was among the lowest; even so, African American drug offenders here are five times more likely than whites to land in prison.
The report offered no explanation for any state's ranking, and few states were volunteering an opinion. "I'm reluctant to draw any conclusions based on a report that's a mystery to me," said a spokesman for Illinois Gov. George Ryan.
Human Rights Watch, whose stated goal is to make governments around the world "pay a heavy price in reputation and legitimacy if they violate the rights of their people," concludes with several policy recommendations:
* Repeal mandatory minimum sentences;
* Increase the availability of drug treatment;
* Eliminate racial profiling.
"If this were happening to whites," Fellner said, "the policies would change."
* * *
Racial Disparity
States in which blacks comprise the highest percentage of imprisoned drug offenders:
1. Maryland: 90%
2. Illinois: 90%
3. South Carolina: 86%
4. North Carolina: 84%
5. Louisiana: 82%
* * *
California: 30%
U.S. average: 62%
* * *
States that have the most disparate ratios between black and white men imprisoned for drug crimes:
1. Illinois: 57:1
2. Wisconsin: 54:1
3. Minnesota: 39:1
4. Maine: 36:1
5. Iowa: 29:1
* * *
California: 5:1
U.S. average: 13:1
* * *
Source: Human Rights Watch
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/dec95sklar.htm
Reinforcing Racism with the War on Drugs
By Holly Sklar
Instead of investing in the disinvested, government declared war.
The U.S. Constitution once counted Black slaves as worth three-fifths of Whites. Today, Black per capita income is three-fifths of Whites. That’s an economic measure of enduring racism. The Latino-White ratio is even worse.
One out of three Black men in their twenties is now in prison or jail, on probation or on parole on any given day. The comparable figure for Latinos is about one in eight, and for Whites, one in fifteen, reports the Washington-based Sentencing Project.
The United States imprisons a greater percentage of its people than any other nation. The federal and state prison population swelled 188 percent between 1980 and 1993--though, contrary to common belief, the crime rate generally went down in that period. The prison-swelling trend is escalating with policies like "three strikes and you’re out" on an increasingly unlevel "playing field."
At the same time the United States is Number One in locking people up, it is Number One among major industrial nations in economic inequality, child poverty, and falling wages. Our government would rather spend $25,000 a year to keep someone in prison than on education, community development, addiction treatment, and employment programs to keep them out. That’s not even counting prison construction costs ranging from $50,000 to $200,000 per prisoner.
Blacks made up 50 percent of state and federal prisoners (and only 12.4 percent of the U.S. population) as of 1992, while Latinos made up 14 percent of prisoners (and 9.5 percent of the population). In 1994, jails were 44 percent Black, 15 percent Latino, and 39 percent White.
Why are prisons and jails so disproportionately Black and Latino? In part, because Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately unemployed and impoverished. Black unemployment is more than double the White rate; the Latino rate is almost double. To be counted in the official unemployment rate you must be actively seeking a job and not finding one. One out of five Blacks ages 20-24 were officially unemployed in 1994, as were one out of three ages 16-19. Studies for the National Commission for Employment Policy by economist Stephen Rose tracked the employment experiences of thousands of young adults over a 22-year period. Among the findings: Nearly three-quarters of Black men were able to maintain a full-time job year-round consistently throughout the 1970s. In the 1980s, only half could do that.
Economic injustice is reinforced by a discriminatory "criminal justice" system. Instead of investing in the disinvested, especially in the inner cities, government declared war.
Racist "War on Drugs"
It is impossible to understand why so many people of color, particularly Blacks, have a record--and why so many more will get a record--without understanding the racially biased "war on drugs." The percentage of drug offenders in federal prisons jumped from 16 percent of inmates in 1970 to 38 percent in 1986, and 61 percent in 1993--and is expected to reach 72 percent by 1997. The percentage of drug offenders in state prisons grew from 9 percent in 1986 to 23 percent in 1993. One out of three women state prisoners is serving time for drug offenses.
More than twice as many people are arrested for drug possession as for trafficking. According to a Justice Department report, "drug trafficking has been elevated above almost every serious crime except murder," including kidnapping, assault, arson, and firearms. Most drug offenders are nonviolent, and many are low-level offenders with no prior criminal records.
Three out of four drug users are White (non-Latino), but Blacks are much more likely to be arrested for drug offenses and receive longer sentences. As the Sentencing Project reports, Blacks constitute 13 percent of all past-month drug users, but 35 percent of arrests for drug possession, 55 percent of convictions, and 74 percent of prison sentences. Almost 90 percent of people sentenced to state prison for drug possession in 1992 were Black and Latino.
The American Bar Association found that drug arrests climbed by 78 percent for juveniles of color during 1986-1991, while decreasing by a third for White juveniles. The disproportionate arrests--and media coverage--feed the mistaken assumption that Black youth use drugs at higher rates than Whites. In a Los Angeles crackdown on drug dealing around schools, nearly all those charged were Black and Latino. The results were predictable. "Officers were placed at predominantly minority schools," reports the Los Angeles Times, "despite the federal studies showing more drug use among white youths."
It is said that truth is the first casualty in war, and the "war on drugs" is no exception. Contrary to stereotype, "the typical cocaine user is white, male, a high school graduate employed full time and living in a small metropolitan area or suburb," to quote former drug czar William Bennett.
By government count, more than 24 million Americans, mostly White, have used marijuana, cocaine or some other illicit drug in the past year. Imagine if the war on drugs targeted Whites in the suburbs instead of Blacks and Latinos in inner-city neighborhoods. Imagine if undercover cops were routinely sent to predominantly White schools and colleges to sell drugs.
"Although it is clear that whites sell most of the nation’s cocaine and account for 80 percent of its consumers," reports the Los Angeles Times, citing law officers and judges, "it is blacks and other minorities who continue to fill up America’s courtrooms and jails, largely because...they are the easiest people to arrest." It’s easier to round up the usual scapegoats.
"There’s as much cocaine in the Sears Tower or in the stock exchange as there is in the black community," Commander Charles Ramsey, supervisor of the Chicago Police Department’s narcotics division, told the Los Angeles Times. "But those guys are harder to catch."
In the words of a USA Today special report: "The war on drugs has, in many places, been fought mainly against blacks...Tens of thousands of arrests--mostly in the inner-city--resulted from dragnets with paramilitary names. Operation Pressure Point in New York City. Operation Thunderbolt in Memphis. Operation Hammer in Los Angeles...‘We don’t have whites on corners selling drugs...They’re in houses and offices,’ says police chief John Dale of Albany, N.Y., where blacks are eight times as likely as whites to be arrested for drugs...‘We’re locking up kids who are scrambling for crumbs, not the people who make big money.’"
While many of the easily spotted street corner buyers are White, as well the big money traffickers and money launderers, you don’t have to be dealing or buying on street corners to feel the racial bias of the drug war. A 1990 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that drug and alcohol abuse rates were slightly higher for pregnant White women than pregnant Black women, but Black women were about ten times more likely to be reported to authorities under a mandatory reporting law.
Between 1986 and 1991, the number of Black women incarcerated for drug offenses jumped 828 percent. That’s compared with 328 percent for Latinas and 241 percent for White women. A 1994 Justice Department study of federal prisoners, summarized by the Sentencing Project, found that "women were over-represented among ‘low-level’ drug offenders who were non-violent, had minimal or no prior criminal history, and were not principal figures in criminal organizations or activities, but who nevertheless received sentences similar to ‘high-level’ drug offenders under the mandatory sentencing policies."
The drug war has been used to justify the erosion of constitutional protections against unwarranted stops, searches and seizures, and the rollback of other civil liberties. The rollback has been especially severe for people of color. Racist self-fulfilling prophecy is evident in the use of racial characteristics in drug suspect profiles. As summed up by Steven Duke and Albert Gross in America’s Longest War, "Hispanics and ‘hippie types’ bear the major brunt of the profiles near our southern border, but young African-Americans suffer from it wherever they go. An African-American who drives a car with an out-of-state license plate is likely to be stopped almost anywhere he goes in America....In Memphis, about 75 percent of the air travelers stopped by drug police in 1989 were black, yet only 4 percent of the flying public is black."
Earlier "drug wars" were also racially biased. "The first drug prohibition law was an 1875 San Francisco ordinance prohibiting opium and aimed at Chinese workers, who were no longer needed to bring the railroad west and who were blamed for taking jobs of whites during a depression," Diana Gordon writes in The Return of the Dangerous Classes. "Themes of racism and nativism, as well as methods of elite manipulation of social conflict, run through the subsequent history of drug policy and reinforce its prohibitionist tendency. Marijuana became a concern only when associated with ‘degenerate’ Mexicans working on farms...during the Great Depression in the Southwest. Cocaine...came to be viewed as a dangerous stimulant when associated with blacks in the first two decades of the [20th] century, despite contemporary evidence that African-Americans were rarely users."
Reinforcing Racism with the War on Drugs
By Holly Sklar
Instead of investing in the disinvested, government declared war.
The U.S. Constitution once counted Black slaves as worth three-fifths of Whites. Today, Black per capita income is three-fifths of Whites. That’s an economic measure of enduring racism. The Latino-White ratio is even worse.
One out of three Black men in their twenties is now in prison or jail, on probation or on parole on any given day. The comparable figure for Latinos is about one in eight, and for Whites, one in fifteen, reports the Washington-based Sentencing Project.
The United States imprisons a greater percentage of its people than any other nation. The federal and state prison population swelled 188 percent between 1980 and 1993--though, contrary to common belief, the crime rate generally went down in that period. The prison-swelling trend is escalating with policies like "three strikes and you’re out" on an increasingly unlevel "playing field."
At the same time the United States is Number One in locking people up, it is Number One among major industrial nations in economic inequality, child poverty, and falling wages. Our government would rather spend $25,000 a year to keep someone in prison than on education, community development, addiction treatment, and employment programs to keep them out. That’s not even counting prison construction costs ranging from $50,000 to $200,000 per prisoner.
Blacks made up 50 percent of state and federal prisoners (and only 12.4 percent of the U.S. population) as of 1992, while Latinos made up 14 percent of prisoners (and 9.5 percent of the population). In 1994, jails were 44 percent Black, 15 percent Latino, and 39 percent White.
Why are prisons and jails so disproportionately Black and Latino? In part, because Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately unemployed and impoverished. Black unemployment is more than double the White rate; the Latino rate is almost double. To be counted in the official unemployment rate you must be actively seeking a job and not finding one. One out of five Blacks ages 20-24 were officially unemployed in 1994, as were one out of three ages 16-19. Studies for the National Commission for Employment Policy by economist Stephen Rose tracked the employment experiences of thousands of young adults over a 22-year period. Among the findings: Nearly three-quarters of Black men were able to maintain a full-time job year-round consistently throughout the 1970s. In the 1980s, only half could do that.
Economic injustice is reinforced by a discriminatory "criminal justice" system. Instead of investing in the disinvested, especially in the inner cities, government declared war.
Racist "War on Drugs"
It is impossible to understand why so many people of color, particularly Blacks, have a record--and why so many more will get a record--without understanding the racially biased "war on drugs." The percentage of drug offenders in federal prisons jumped from 16 percent of inmates in 1970 to 38 percent in 1986, and 61 percent in 1993--and is expected to reach 72 percent by 1997. The percentage of drug offenders in state prisons grew from 9 percent in 1986 to 23 percent in 1993. One out of three women state prisoners is serving time for drug offenses.
More than twice as many people are arrested for drug possession as for trafficking. According to a Justice Department report, "drug trafficking has been elevated above almost every serious crime except murder," including kidnapping, assault, arson, and firearms. Most drug offenders are nonviolent, and many are low-level offenders with no prior criminal records.
Three out of four drug users are White (non-Latino), but Blacks are much more likely to be arrested for drug offenses and receive longer sentences. As the Sentencing Project reports, Blacks constitute 13 percent of all past-month drug users, but 35 percent of arrests for drug possession, 55 percent of convictions, and 74 percent of prison sentences. Almost 90 percent of people sentenced to state prison for drug possession in 1992 were Black and Latino.
The American Bar Association found that drug arrests climbed by 78 percent for juveniles of color during 1986-1991, while decreasing by a third for White juveniles. The disproportionate arrests--and media coverage--feed the mistaken assumption that Black youth use drugs at higher rates than Whites. In a Los Angeles crackdown on drug dealing around schools, nearly all those charged were Black and Latino. The results were predictable. "Officers were placed at predominantly minority schools," reports the Los Angeles Times, "despite the federal studies showing more drug use among white youths."
It is said that truth is the first casualty in war, and the "war on drugs" is no exception. Contrary to stereotype, "the typical cocaine user is white, male, a high school graduate employed full time and living in a small metropolitan area or suburb," to quote former drug czar William Bennett.
By government count, more than 24 million Americans, mostly White, have used marijuana, cocaine or some other illicit drug in the past year. Imagine if the war on drugs targeted Whites in the suburbs instead of Blacks and Latinos in inner-city neighborhoods. Imagine if undercover cops were routinely sent to predominantly White schools and colleges to sell drugs.
"Although it is clear that whites sell most of the nation’s cocaine and account for 80 percent of its consumers," reports the Los Angeles Times, citing law officers and judges, "it is blacks and other minorities who continue to fill up America’s courtrooms and jails, largely because...they are the easiest people to arrest." It’s easier to round up the usual scapegoats.
"There’s as much cocaine in the Sears Tower or in the stock exchange as there is in the black community," Commander Charles Ramsey, supervisor of the Chicago Police Department’s narcotics division, told the Los Angeles Times. "But those guys are harder to catch."
In the words of a USA Today special report: "The war on drugs has, in many places, been fought mainly against blacks...Tens of thousands of arrests--mostly in the inner-city--resulted from dragnets with paramilitary names. Operation Pressure Point in New York City. Operation Thunderbolt in Memphis. Operation Hammer in Los Angeles...‘We don’t have whites on corners selling drugs...They’re in houses and offices,’ says police chief John Dale of Albany, N.Y., where blacks are eight times as likely as whites to be arrested for drugs...‘We’re locking up kids who are scrambling for crumbs, not the people who make big money.’"
While many of the easily spotted street corner buyers are White, as well the big money traffickers and money launderers, you don’t have to be dealing or buying on street corners to feel the racial bias of the drug war. A 1990 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that drug and alcohol abuse rates were slightly higher for pregnant White women than pregnant Black women, but Black women were about ten times more likely to be reported to authorities under a mandatory reporting law.
Between 1986 and 1991, the number of Black women incarcerated for drug offenses jumped 828 percent. That’s compared with 328 percent for Latinas and 241 percent for White women. A 1994 Justice Department study of federal prisoners, summarized by the Sentencing Project, found that "women were over-represented among ‘low-level’ drug offenders who were non-violent, had minimal or no prior criminal history, and were not principal figures in criminal organizations or activities, but who nevertheless received sentences similar to ‘high-level’ drug offenders under the mandatory sentencing policies."
The drug war has been used to justify the erosion of constitutional protections against unwarranted stops, searches and seizures, and the rollback of other civil liberties. The rollback has been especially severe for people of color. Racist self-fulfilling prophecy is evident in the use of racial characteristics in drug suspect profiles. As summed up by Steven Duke and Albert Gross in America’s Longest War, "Hispanics and ‘hippie types’ bear the major brunt of the profiles near our southern border, but young African-Americans suffer from it wherever they go. An African-American who drives a car with an out-of-state license plate is likely to be stopped almost anywhere he goes in America....In Memphis, about 75 percent of the air travelers stopped by drug police in 1989 were black, yet only 4 percent of the flying public is black."
Earlier "drug wars" were also racially biased. "The first drug prohibition law was an 1875 San Francisco ordinance prohibiting opium and aimed at Chinese workers, who were no longer needed to bring the railroad west and who were blamed for taking jobs of whites during a depression," Diana Gordon writes in The Return of the Dangerous Classes. "Themes of racism and nativism, as well as methods of elite manipulation of social conflict, run through the subsequent history of drug policy and reinforce its prohibitionist tendency. Marijuana became a concern only when associated with ‘degenerate’ Mexicans working on farms...during the Great Depression in the Southwest. Cocaine...came to be viewed as a dangerous stimulant when associated with blacks in the first two decades of the [20th] century, despite contemporary evidence that African-Americans were rarely users."
WAR ON MINORITIES....cont.
"The war on drugs thus signals the return of the dangerous classes," Gordon observes. The idea of dangerous classes arose in the United States in the second half of the 19th century, "spurred by migration and immigration--the flow into cities of people displaced from farms by agricultural mechanization and from far-off lands by poverty and pogrom." The current drug war, says Gordon, is not only "a rearguard action against full equality for racial minorities," but an instrument for "whipping young people (and often cultural liberals) back into line."
Crackdown
Beginning in the mid-1980s, Congress has enacted a growing number of harsh federal mandatory minimum sentences, with racist results. A 1991 report to Congress by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that "whites are more likely than non-whites to be sentenced below the applicable mandatory minimum." In cases where mandatory minimums apply for drug offenses, a 1992 Federal Judicial Center report found that "there has always been a tendency for the sentences of whites to be lower than the sentences of non-whites, a difference that, unfortunately, has become larger over time." The average sentence for Blacks was 28 percent higher in 1984 than for Whites. After narrowing to a difference of 11 percent in 1986, the gap steadily increased. By 1990, the average sentence for Blacks was 49 percent higher than for Whites.
The racial bias of the drug war is glaringly evident in the much harsher mandatory minimums for crack cocaine than powder cocaine. The federal mandatory minimum for possession of more than five grams of crack cocaine is five years in prison (five grams amounts to a teaspoon of crack). First-offenders get the same five-year penalty for dealing 500 grams of powder cocaine (averaging $32,500 to $50,000 retail according to the Sentencing Commission) as they do for five grams of crack (averaging $225 to $750). First-offenders dealing 50 grams or more of crack cocaine (50 grams is less than two ounces) get a ten-year mandatory minimum, the same as for 5,000 grams of powder cocaine.
In 1994, 90 percent of federal crack offenders were Black, 6 percent Latino, and less than 4 percent White. Federal powder cocaine offenders were 30 percent Black, 43 percent Latino, and 26 percent White. The Sentencing Commission reports in Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy that crack cocaine defendants are the only group of drug offenders with a median age (26) under 30 years old.
As the Minnesota Supreme Court found in 1991, there is no rational basis for distinguishing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. The Sentencing Commission recommended earlier this year that crack and powder cocaine charges be equalized. Departing from their normal pattern of following Commission recommendations, Congress and President Clinton chose to maintain the disparities.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal of a case in which indictments against Black defendants were dismissed after federal prosecutors in Los Angeles refused to explain in detail why nearly all those prosecuted for crack cocaine offenses are Black. When Whites are arrested for crack offenses, they are typically prosecuted in state court with less severe penalties. The Los Angeles Times reports that in Los Angeles, "sometimes called the crack capital of the country, critics say a two-tier system of justice has evolved--where black and Latino crack dealers are hammered with 10-year mandatory federal sentences while whites prosecuted in state court face a maximum of five years and often receive no more than a year in jail."
Crack sentencing is a modern equivalent of the Black Codes which reinforced post-slavery discrimination. From the end of the Civil War in 1865 to 1890, Blacks were over 95 percent of the inmate populations in most southern state penal systems, and Black state convicts were leased out to work in plantations, mines, factories, and railroads.
A century later, Blacks are a large and growing share of the prison population; chain gangs are back in Alabama and Arizona; private for-profit prisons are a growth industry; and prison labor is booming. As Reese Erlich explained in Covert Action Quarterly, the cheap labor of American prisoners is used to stitch jeans, assemble circuit boards, and process data. Presidential candidate Senator Phil Gramm called for prison labor to pay half the cost of the federal prison system in a 1995 speech to the National Rifle Association.
"The war on drugs thus signals the return of the dangerous classes," Gordon observes. The idea of dangerous classes arose in the United States in the second half of the 19th century, "spurred by migration and immigration--the flow into cities of people displaced from farms by agricultural mechanization and from far-off lands by poverty and pogrom." The current drug war, says Gordon, is not only "a rearguard action against full equality for racial minorities," but an instrument for "whipping young people (and often cultural liberals) back into line."
Crackdown
Beginning in the mid-1980s, Congress has enacted a growing number of harsh federal mandatory minimum sentences, with racist results. A 1991 report to Congress by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that "whites are more likely than non-whites to be sentenced below the applicable mandatory minimum." In cases where mandatory minimums apply for drug offenses, a 1992 Federal Judicial Center report found that "there has always been a tendency for the sentences of whites to be lower than the sentences of non-whites, a difference that, unfortunately, has become larger over time." The average sentence for Blacks was 28 percent higher in 1984 than for Whites. After narrowing to a difference of 11 percent in 1986, the gap steadily increased. By 1990, the average sentence for Blacks was 49 percent higher than for Whites.
The racial bias of the drug war is glaringly evident in the much harsher mandatory minimums for crack cocaine than powder cocaine. The federal mandatory minimum for possession of more than five grams of crack cocaine is five years in prison (five grams amounts to a teaspoon of crack). First-offenders get the same five-year penalty for dealing 500 grams of powder cocaine (averaging $32,500 to $50,000 retail according to the Sentencing Commission) as they do for five grams of crack (averaging $225 to $750). First-offenders dealing 50 grams or more of crack cocaine (50 grams is less than two ounces) get a ten-year mandatory minimum, the same as for 5,000 grams of powder cocaine.
In 1994, 90 percent of federal crack offenders were Black, 6 percent Latino, and less than 4 percent White. Federal powder cocaine offenders were 30 percent Black, 43 percent Latino, and 26 percent White. The Sentencing Commission reports in Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy that crack cocaine defendants are the only group of drug offenders with a median age (26) under 30 years old.
As the Minnesota Supreme Court found in 1991, there is no rational basis for distinguishing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. The Sentencing Commission recommended earlier this year that crack and powder cocaine charges be equalized. Departing from their normal pattern of following Commission recommendations, Congress and President Clinton chose to maintain the disparities.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal of a case in which indictments against Black defendants were dismissed after federal prosecutors in Los Angeles refused to explain in detail why nearly all those prosecuted for crack cocaine offenses are Black. When Whites are arrested for crack offenses, they are typically prosecuted in state court with less severe penalties. The Los Angeles Times reports that in Los Angeles, "sometimes called the crack capital of the country, critics say a two-tier system of justice has evolved--where black and Latino crack dealers are hammered with 10-year mandatory federal sentences while whites prosecuted in state court face a maximum of five years and often receive no more than a year in jail."
Crack sentencing is a modern equivalent of the Black Codes which reinforced post-slavery discrimination. From the end of the Civil War in 1865 to 1890, Blacks were over 95 percent of the inmate populations in most southern state penal systems, and Black state convicts were leased out to work in plantations, mines, factories, and railroads.
A century later, Blacks are a large and growing share of the prison population; chain gangs are back in Alabama and Arizona; private for-profit prisons are a growth industry; and prison labor is booming. As Reese Erlich explained in Covert Action Quarterly, the cheap labor of American prisoners is used to stitch jeans, assemble circuit boards, and process data. Presidential candidate Senator Phil Gramm called for prison labor to pay half the cost of the federal prison system in a 1995 speech to the National Rifle Association.
Disorder in the Court
A growing number of judges are openly opposing mandatory minimums. Lois Forer, a longtime trial judge in Philadelphia, is among those who resigned rather than impose unconscionably unjust sentences. In A Rage to Punish, Forer condemns mandatory minimums for violating "the principle of proportionately, that the punishment should not exceed the gravity of the offense," and because "the crimes to which the mandatory law applied were arbitrarily selected and bore no rational relationship to public safety, dangerousness, culpability, law enforcement, or deterrence of crime."
Mandatory minimum statutes transfer sentencing discretion from theoretically neutral judges, who rule publicly, to prosecutors, who are by definition not neutral and who exercise their control secretly. The prosecutor decides whether to impose charges for which mandatory minimums apply and whether the harshest possible charges will be imposed. The prosecutor controls who will be able to benefit from providing incriminating information and other assistance to the prosecution.
Low-level offenders are routinely treated more harshly than high-level offenders because the low-level offenders can’t provide the kind of information or forfeited assets wanted by prosecutors in exchange for reduced charges and sentences. The Boston Globe recently spotlighted the role of asset bargaining in Massachusetts in the excellent series, "Overdosing on the drug war."
"Under the statutory minimum, it can make no difference whether [the defendant] is a lifetime criminal or a first-time offender," says Judge J. Spencer Letts of California, as quoted in a 1994 Federal Judicial Center report. "Indeed, under this sledgehammer approach, it could make no difference if the day before making this one slip in an otherwise unblemished life, defendant had rescued fifteen children from a burning building, or had won the Congressional Medal of Honor while defending his country."
More judges are making their disgust known even as they impose sentence. In a case reported by the Los Angeles Times, U.S. District Judge Richard Gadbois lamented handing down a mandatory ten-year sentence to a mother receiving welfare "who was paid $52 to mail a package that, unbeknown to her, contained crack." As government officials know, but pretend otherwise, welfare payments have long been set way below subsistence level.
According to the Los Angeles Times, about 100 senior judges are now refusing to hear even low-level drug cases. Other judges hear cases and find ways to avoid imposing undeserved mandatory minimums. As Massachusetts Judge Cortland Mathers put it in the Boston Globe, when faced with the revolting prospect of sentencing another low-level drug offender to hard time, "Disobey the law in order to be just."
Burning the Village to "Save" It
New York led the state wave of extreme mandatory minimum sentences with the Rockefeller drug laws implemented in the 1970s. Michael Tonry explains in Malign Neglect that a multiyear evaluation concluded the Rockefeller laws had no effect on drug trafficking or drug use. Indeed, says Tonry, "for at least twenty-five years, researchers have shown and honest politicians have known that manipulations of penalties have relatively little or no effect on crime rates." The Justice Department reports that in studies dating back to the 1950s, "time served in prison has never been found to decrease" the likelihood of recidivism.
In a mad rush to punish rather than prevent crime or rehabilitate criminals, lawmakers are increasing time penalties while destroying education, treatment, training, and other effective programs inside and outside of prison. As a recent Atlantic Monthly article said about McKean federal correctional institution in Pennsylvania, it "does everything that ‘make ‘em bust rocks’ politicians decry--imagine, educating inmates!--and it works." If it works, kill it, says Congress in its drive to expand the authoritarian state and intensify the cycle of unequal opportunity.
The courts, juvenile facilities, jails, and prisons are jammed. Murderers, child molesters, rapists, and other violent offenders are being released early to make way for nonviolent drug offenders. Nationally, less than 15 percent of people needing publicly funded drug treatment are able to get it at any one time. In a 1994 study commissioned by the Clinton administration, the RAND Drug Policy Research Center concluded, as reported in USA Today, that to make drug policy more effective, money should be shifted from law enforcement to treatment: "Treatment is seven times more cost-effective than domestic drug enforcement in reducing cocaine use and 15 times more cost-effective in reducing the social costs of crime and lost productivity." Failing to change the study’s conclusions, the Clinton administration rejected them.
"Corrections" spending, the fastest growing part of state budgets, is consuming tax dollars that once went to social services such as education, job training, health clinics, and housing. In a 1995 survey of state corrections officials cited by the Sentencing Project, officials estimated that their 1994 inmate populations would rise 51 percent by the year 2000. The California state prison population is expected to nearly double from 125,000 in 1994 to 211,000 in 1999.
Vincent Schiraldi, director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, observed in Dollars and Sense: "For the cost of incarcerating one prisoner for one year, California can educate 10 community college students, five Cal State students, or two University of California students. So imposing a 40-year sentence on one Three Strikes burglar means forgoing 200 two-year community college educations. If even one of the 200 turns to crime in the absence of educational and employment opportunities, incarcerating that burglar will have failed to reduce California’s crime rate. Meanwhile, it will have decreased the state’s educated workforce by 200 people."
Doing Violence
Political leaders foster the myth that American violence is largely the product of illegal drugs and inner-city gangs. The United States has had the industrial world’s highest homicide rates for some 150 years. The homicide rate for White American males, ages 15-24, was at least twice as high as the overall rate for males, ages 15-24, in 21 other countries for 1986-87, including Canada, Japan, Israel, and European countries. For women, the greatest threat of violent injury and death comes from so-called "domestic violence" by past or present boyfriends or spouses.
In reality, the heavily advertised legal drug alcohol is the drug most linked to violence and death--excluding the highly profitable, deadly, addictive nicotine. Indeed, in the words of a 1994 Justice Department report by Jeffrey Roth, coeditor of the National Research Council’s Understanding and Preventing Violence, "Of all psychoactive substances, alcohol is the only one whose consumption has been shown to commonly increase aggression." Roth notes, "For at least the last several decades, alcohol drinking--by the perpetrator of a crime, the victim, or both--has immediately preceded at least half of all violent events, including murders, in the samples studied by researchers."
Alcohol is associated with many more homicides nationally than illicit drugs. And almost the same number of people are killed annually by drunk drivers as are murdered. Drunk drivers are overwhelmingly White males.
The use of marijuana, the nation’s most commonly used illegal drug, is not associated with violence or death. Indeed, writes Eric Schlosser in The Atlantic Monthly, "Although the misuse of over-the-counter medications such as aspirin, acetaminophen, and antihistamines each year kills hundreds of Americans, not a single death has ever been credibly attributed directly to smoking or consuming marijuana in the 5,000 years of the plant’s recorded use." Yet law enforcement officers and politicians indulge in modern-day "Reefer Madness." Daryl Gates, then police chief of Los Angeles, testified at a 1990 Senate hearing that those who "blast some pot on a casual basis" should be "taken out and shot."
We’ve come a long way backward since 1972 when a bipartisan commission appointed by President Nixon advocated the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use--a recommendation, not surprisingly, he rejected. In 1993, about 381,000 people were arrested, by FBI count, for possession (the majority), sale or production of marijuana. In numerous states, possessing, selling or growing even small amounts of marijuana can land you in prison for many more years than the average murderer--and the government can seize your home, farm, and other assets. In many states, says Schlosser, "possession of more than an ounce--roughly equal to the amount of tobacco in a pack of cigarettes" is a felony. In Oklahoma, that can get you life in prison.
Most of the violence now attributed to illicit drugs is a product of their hypocritical prohibition. The drug war has increased the proliferation of guns to adults and children, diverted resources better spent, endangered lives and civil liberties, and enriched organized crime. As Roth states, "Illegal drugs and violence are linked primarily through drug marketing: disputes among rival distributors, arguments and robberies involving buyers and sellers, property crimes committed to raise drug money and, more speculatively, social and economic interactions between the illegal markets and the surrounding communities." Instead of ending today’s drug Prohibition and emphasizing health education and the prevention and treatment of addiction, government spreads disinformation, cuts social services and escalates the violence-producing "war on drugs."
A growing number of judges are openly opposing mandatory minimums. Lois Forer, a longtime trial judge in Philadelphia, is among those who resigned rather than impose unconscionably unjust sentences. In A Rage to Punish, Forer condemns mandatory minimums for violating "the principle of proportionately, that the punishment should not exceed the gravity of the offense," and because "the crimes to which the mandatory law applied were arbitrarily selected and bore no rational relationship to public safety, dangerousness, culpability, law enforcement, or deterrence of crime."
Mandatory minimum statutes transfer sentencing discretion from theoretically neutral judges, who rule publicly, to prosecutors, who are by definition not neutral and who exercise their control secretly. The prosecutor decides whether to impose charges for which mandatory minimums apply and whether the harshest possible charges will be imposed. The prosecutor controls who will be able to benefit from providing incriminating information and other assistance to the prosecution.
Low-level offenders are routinely treated more harshly than high-level offenders because the low-level offenders can’t provide the kind of information or forfeited assets wanted by prosecutors in exchange for reduced charges and sentences. The Boston Globe recently spotlighted the role of asset bargaining in Massachusetts in the excellent series, "Overdosing on the drug war."
"Under the statutory minimum, it can make no difference whether [the defendant] is a lifetime criminal or a first-time offender," says Judge J. Spencer Letts of California, as quoted in a 1994 Federal Judicial Center report. "Indeed, under this sledgehammer approach, it could make no difference if the day before making this one slip in an otherwise unblemished life, defendant had rescued fifteen children from a burning building, or had won the Congressional Medal of Honor while defending his country."
More judges are making their disgust known even as they impose sentence. In a case reported by the Los Angeles Times, U.S. District Judge Richard Gadbois lamented handing down a mandatory ten-year sentence to a mother receiving welfare "who was paid $52 to mail a package that, unbeknown to her, contained crack." As government officials know, but pretend otherwise, welfare payments have long been set way below subsistence level.
According to the Los Angeles Times, about 100 senior judges are now refusing to hear even low-level drug cases. Other judges hear cases and find ways to avoid imposing undeserved mandatory minimums. As Massachusetts Judge Cortland Mathers put it in the Boston Globe, when faced with the revolting prospect of sentencing another low-level drug offender to hard time, "Disobey the law in order to be just."
Burning the Village to "Save" It
New York led the state wave of extreme mandatory minimum sentences with the Rockefeller drug laws implemented in the 1970s. Michael Tonry explains in Malign Neglect that a multiyear evaluation concluded the Rockefeller laws had no effect on drug trafficking or drug use. Indeed, says Tonry, "for at least twenty-five years, researchers have shown and honest politicians have known that manipulations of penalties have relatively little or no effect on crime rates." The Justice Department reports that in studies dating back to the 1950s, "time served in prison has never been found to decrease" the likelihood of recidivism.
In a mad rush to punish rather than prevent crime or rehabilitate criminals, lawmakers are increasing time penalties while destroying education, treatment, training, and other effective programs inside and outside of prison. As a recent Atlantic Monthly article said about McKean federal correctional institution in Pennsylvania, it "does everything that ‘make ‘em bust rocks’ politicians decry--imagine, educating inmates!--and it works." If it works, kill it, says Congress in its drive to expand the authoritarian state and intensify the cycle of unequal opportunity.
The courts, juvenile facilities, jails, and prisons are jammed. Murderers, child molesters, rapists, and other violent offenders are being released early to make way for nonviolent drug offenders. Nationally, less than 15 percent of people needing publicly funded drug treatment are able to get it at any one time. In a 1994 study commissioned by the Clinton administration, the RAND Drug Policy Research Center concluded, as reported in USA Today, that to make drug policy more effective, money should be shifted from law enforcement to treatment: "Treatment is seven times more cost-effective than domestic drug enforcement in reducing cocaine use and 15 times more cost-effective in reducing the social costs of crime and lost productivity." Failing to change the study’s conclusions, the Clinton administration rejected them.
"Corrections" spending, the fastest growing part of state budgets, is consuming tax dollars that once went to social services such as education, job training, health clinics, and housing. In a 1995 survey of state corrections officials cited by the Sentencing Project, officials estimated that their 1994 inmate populations would rise 51 percent by the year 2000. The California state prison population is expected to nearly double from 125,000 in 1994 to 211,000 in 1999.
Vincent Schiraldi, director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, observed in Dollars and Sense: "For the cost of incarcerating one prisoner for one year, California can educate 10 community college students, five Cal State students, or two University of California students. So imposing a 40-year sentence on one Three Strikes burglar means forgoing 200 two-year community college educations. If even one of the 200 turns to crime in the absence of educational and employment opportunities, incarcerating that burglar will have failed to reduce California’s crime rate. Meanwhile, it will have decreased the state’s educated workforce by 200 people."
Doing Violence
Political leaders foster the myth that American violence is largely the product of illegal drugs and inner-city gangs. The United States has had the industrial world’s highest homicide rates for some 150 years. The homicide rate for White American males, ages 15-24, was at least twice as high as the overall rate for males, ages 15-24, in 21 other countries for 1986-87, including Canada, Japan, Israel, and European countries. For women, the greatest threat of violent injury and death comes from so-called "domestic violence" by past or present boyfriends or spouses.
In reality, the heavily advertised legal drug alcohol is the drug most linked to violence and death--excluding the highly profitable, deadly, addictive nicotine. Indeed, in the words of a 1994 Justice Department report by Jeffrey Roth, coeditor of the National Research Council’s Understanding and Preventing Violence, "Of all psychoactive substances, alcohol is the only one whose consumption has been shown to commonly increase aggression." Roth notes, "For at least the last several decades, alcohol drinking--by the perpetrator of a crime, the victim, or both--has immediately preceded at least half of all violent events, including murders, in the samples studied by researchers."
Alcohol is associated with many more homicides nationally than illicit drugs. And almost the same number of people are killed annually by drunk drivers as are murdered. Drunk drivers are overwhelmingly White males.
The use of marijuana, the nation’s most commonly used illegal drug, is not associated with violence or death. Indeed, writes Eric Schlosser in The Atlantic Monthly, "Although the misuse of over-the-counter medications such as aspirin, acetaminophen, and antihistamines each year kills hundreds of Americans, not a single death has ever been credibly attributed directly to smoking or consuming marijuana in the 5,000 years of the plant’s recorded use." Yet law enforcement officers and politicians indulge in modern-day "Reefer Madness." Daryl Gates, then police chief of Los Angeles, testified at a 1990 Senate hearing that those who "blast some pot on a casual basis" should be "taken out and shot."
We’ve come a long way backward since 1972 when a bipartisan commission appointed by President Nixon advocated the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use--a recommendation, not surprisingly, he rejected. In 1993, about 381,000 people were arrested, by FBI count, for possession (the majority), sale or production of marijuana. In numerous states, possessing, selling or growing even small amounts of marijuana can land you in prison for many more years than the average murderer--and the government can seize your home, farm, and other assets. In many states, says Schlosser, "possession of more than an ounce--roughly equal to the amount of tobacco in a pack of cigarettes" is a felony. In Oklahoma, that can get you life in prison.
Most of the violence now attributed to illicit drugs is a product of their hypocritical prohibition. The drug war has increased the proliferation of guns to adults and children, diverted resources better spent, endangered lives and civil liberties, and enriched organized crime. As Roth states, "Illegal drugs and violence are linked primarily through drug marketing: disputes among rival distributors, arguments and robberies involving buyers and sellers, property crimes committed to raise drug money and, more speculatively, social and economic interactions between the illegal markets and the surrounding communities." Instead of ending today’s drug Prohibition and emphasizing health education and the prevention and treatment of addiction, government spreads disinformation, cuts social services and escalates the violence-producing "war on drugs."
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/racepris.htm
DRUG WAR FACTS!! Race, Prison and the Drug Laws
1) "The racially disproportionate nature of the war on drugs is not just devastating to black Americans. It contradicts faith in the principles of justice and equal protection of the laws that should be the bedrock of any constitutional democracy; it exposes and deepens the racial fault lines that continue to weaken the country and belies its promise as a land of equal opportunity; and it undermines faith among all races in the fairness and efficacy of the criminal justice system. Urgent action is needed, at both the state and federal level, to address this crisis for the American nation."
Source: Key Recommendations from Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs (Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, June 2000), from the web at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/drugs/war/key-reco.htm
2) "Our criminal laws, while facially neutral, are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased. The injustices of the criminal justice system threaten to render irrelevant fifty years of hard-fought civil rights progress."
Source: Welch, Ronald H. and Angulo, Carlos T., Justice On Trial: Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System (Washington, DC: Leadership Conference on Civil Rights / Leadership Conference Education Fund, May 2000), p. v.
3) "Expressed in terms of percentages, 10.0% of black non-Hispanic males age 25 to 29 were in prison on December 31, 2001, compared to 2.9% of Hispanic males and about 1.2% of white males in the same age group. Although incarceration rates drop with age, the percentage of black males age 45 to 54 in prison in 2001 was still nearly 2.7% -- only slightly lower than the highest rate (2.9%) among Hispanic males (age 25-29) and more than twice the highest rate (1.3%) among white males (age 30 to 34)."
Source: Harrison, Paige M. & Allen J. Beck, PhD, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2001 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, July 2002), p. 12.
4) According to the US Census Bureau, the US population in 2000 was 281,421,906. Of that, 194,552,774 (69.1%) were white; 33,947,837 (12.1%) were black; and 35,305,818 (12.5%) were of Hispanic origin. Additionally, 2,068,883 (0.7%) were Native American, and 10,123,169 (3.8%) were Asian.
Source: US Census Bureau, Department of Commerce, Census 2000 Redistricting Data (P.L. 94-171) Summary File for states, Population by Race and Hispanic or Latino Origin for the United States: 2000 (PHC-T-a) Table 1, from the web at http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t1/tab01.txt , last accessed September 8, 2001.
5) Regarding State prison population growth from 1990 through 2000, the US Dept. of Justice reports, "Overall, the increasing number of drug offenses accounted for 27% of the total growth among black inmates, 7% of the total growth among Hispanic inmates, and 15% of the growth among white inmates (table 19)."
Source: Harrison, Paige M. & Allen J. Beck, PhD, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2001 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, July 2002), p. 13.
6) According to the federal Household Survey, "most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998." And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%.
Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Summary Report 1998 (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999), p. 13; Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 343, Table 4.10, p. 435, Table 5.48, and p. 505, Table 6.52; Beck, Allen J., Ph.D. and Mumola, Christopher J., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 10, Table 16; Beck, Allen J., PhD, and Paige M. Harrison, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, August 2001), p. 11, Table 16.
DRUG WAR FACTS!! Race, Prison and the Drug Laws
1) "The racially disproportionate nature of the war on drugs is not just devastating to black Americans. It contradicts faith in the principles of justice and equal protection of the laws that should be the bedrock of any constitutional democracy; it exposes and deepens the racial fault lines that continue to weaken the country and belies its promise as a land of equal opportunity; and it undermines faith among all races in the fairness and efficacy of the criminal justice system. Urgent action is needed, at both the state and federal level, to address this crisis for the American nation."
Source: Key Recommendations from Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs (Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, June 2000), from the web at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/drugs/war/key-reco.htm
2) "Our criminal laws, while facially neutral, are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased. The injustices of the criminal justice system threaten to render irrelevant fifty years of hard-fought civil rights progress."
Source: Welch, Ronald H. and Angulo, Carlos T., Justice On Trial: Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System (Washington, DC: Leadership Conference on Civil Rights / Leadership Conference Education Fund, May 2000), p. v.
3) "Expressed in terms of percentages, 10.0% of black non-Hispanic males age 25 to 29 were in prison on December 31, 2001, compared to 2.9% of Hispanic males and about 1.2% of white males in the same age group. Although incarceration rates drop with age, the percentage of black males age 45 to 54 in prison in 2001 was still nearly 2.7% -- only slightly lower than the highest rate (2.9%) among Hispanic males (age 25-29) and more than twice the highest rate (1.3%) among white males (age 30 to 34)."
Source: Harrison, Paige M. & Allen J. Beck, PhD, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2001 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, July 2002), p. 12.
4) According to the US Census Bureau, the US population in 2000 was 281,421,906. Of that, 194,552,774 (69.1%) were white; 33,947,837 (12.1%) were black; and 35,305,818 (12.5%) were of Hispanic origin. Additionally, 2,068,883 (0.7%) were Native American, and 10,123,169 (3.8%) were Asian.
Source: US Census Bureau, Department of Commerce, Census 2000 Redistricting Data (P.L. 94-171) Summary File for states, Population by Race and Hispanic or Latino Origin for the United States: 2000 (PHC-T-a) Table 1, from the web at http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t1/tab01.txt , last accessed September 8, 2001.
5) Regarding State prison population growth from 1990 through 2000, the US Dept. of Justice reports, "Overall, the increasing number of drug offenses accounted for 27% of the total growth among black inmates, 7% of the total growth among Hispanic inmates, and 15% of the growth among white inmates (table 19)."
Source: Harrison, Paige M. & Allen J. Beck, PhD, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2001 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, July 2002), p. 13.
6) According to the federal Household Survey, "most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998." And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%.
Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Summary Report 1998 (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999), p. 13; Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 343, Table 4.10, p. 435, Table 5.48, and p. 505, Table 6.52; Beck, Allen J., Ph.D. and Mumola, Christopher J., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 10, Table 16; Beck, Allen J., PhD, and Paige M. Harrison, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, August 2001), p. 11, Table 16.
7) Among persons convicted of drug felonies in state courts, whites were less likely than African-Americans to be sent to prison. Thirty-three percent (33%) of convicted white defendants received a prison sentence, while 51% of African-American defendants received prison sentences. It should also be noted that Hispanic felons are included in both demographic groups rather than being tracked separately so no separate statistic is available.
Source: Durose, Matthew R., and Langan, Patrick A., Bureau of Justice Statistics, State Court Sentencing of Convicted Felons, 1998 Statistical Tables (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, December 2001), Table 25, available on the web at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/scsc98st.htm, last accessed December 21, 2001.
8) "The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 700 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by Russia (665), the Cayman Islands (600), Belarus (555), the US Virgin Islands (550), Kazakhstan (520), Turkmenistan (490), the Bahamas (480), Belize (460), and Bermuda (445).
"However, almost two thirds of countries (63%) have rates of 150 per 100,000 or below. (The United Kingdom’s rate of 125 per 100,000 of the national population places it at about the mid-point in the World List. Among European Union countries its rate is the second highest, after Portugal’s 130.)"
Source: Walmsley, Roy, "World Prison Population List (Third Edition)" (London, England, UK: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, 2002), p. 1, from the web at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/r166.pdf, last accessed Oct. 12, 2002.
9) According to the US Dept. of Justice, in the United States in 2000 the incarceration rate overall was 690 inmates per 100,000 US residents. For African-American women, the rate was 380 per 100,000; for African-American men, the rate was 4,848 per 100,000; the rate for Hispanic women was 119 per 100,000; for Hispanic men the rate was 1.668 per 100,000; the rate for white women was 67 per 100,000; and for white men, the rate was 705 per 100,000.
Source: Beck, Allen J., Ph.D., Jennifer Karberg & Paige M. Harrison, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2001 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, April 2002), p. 1 & p. 12, Table 15.
10) At the start of the 1990s, the U.S. had more Black men (between the ages of 20 and 29) under the control of the nation's criminal justice system than the total number in college. This and other factors have led some scholars to conclude that, "crime control policies are a major contributor to the disruption of the family, the prevalence of single parent families, and children raised without a father in the ghetto, and the 'inability of people to get the jobs still available.'"
Source: Craig Haney, Ph.D., and Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., "The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy: Twenty-five Years After the Stanford Prison Experiment," American Psychologist, Vol. 53, No. 7 (July 1998), p. 716.
11) 1.46 million black men out of a total voting population of 10.4 million have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions.
Source: Thomas, P., "Study Suggests Black Male Prison Rate Impinges on Political Process," The Washington Post (January 30, 1997), p. A3.
12) "Thirteen percent of all adult black men -- 1.4 million -- are disenfranchised, representing one-third of the total disenfranchised population and reflecting a rate of disenfranchisement that is seven times the national average. Election voting statistics offer an approximation of the political importance of black disenfranchisement: 1.4 million black men are disenfranchised compared to 4.6 million black men who voted in 1996."
Source: Fellner, Jamie and Mauer, Marc, "Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States" (Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch & The Sentencing Project, 1998), p. 8. Election statistics cited are from the US Census Bureau, "Voting and Registration in the Election of November 1996" (p20-504), July 1998.
Source: Durose, Matthew R., and Langan, Patrick A., Bureau of Justice Statistics, State Court Sentencing of Convicted Felons, 1998 Statistical Tables (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, December 2001), Table 25, available on the web at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/scsc98st.htm, last accessed December 21, 2001.
8) "The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 700 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by Russia (665), the Cayman Islands (600), Belarus (555), the US Virgin Islands (550), Kazakhstan (520), Turkmenistan (490), the Bahamas (480), Belize (460), and Bermuda (445).
"However, almost two thirds of countries (63%) have rates of 150 per 100,000 or below. (The United Kingdom’s rate of 125 per 100,000 of the national population places it at about the mid-point in the World List. Among European Union countries its rate is the second highest, after Portugal’s 130.)"
Source: Walmsley, Roy, "World Prison Population List (Third Edition)" (London, England, UK: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, 2002), p. 1, from the web at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/r166.pdf, last accessed Oct. 12, 2002.
9) According to the US Dept. of Justice, in the United States in 2000 the incarceration rate overall was 690 inmates per 100,000 US residents. For African-American women, the rate was 380 per 100,000; for African-American men, the rate was 4,848 per 100,000; the rate for Hispanic women was 119 per 100,000; for Hispanic men the rate was 1.668 per 100,000; the rate for white women was 67 per 100,000; and for white men, the rate was 705 per 100,000.
Source: Beck, Allen J., Ph.D., Jennifer Karberg & Paige M. Harrison, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2001 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, April 2002), p. 1 & p. 12, Table 15.
10) At the start of the 1990s, the U.S. had more Black men (between the ages of 20 and 29) under the control of the nation's criminal justice system than the total number in college. This and other factors have led some scholars to conclude that, "crime control policies are a major contributor to the disruption of the family, the prevalence of single parent families, and children raised without a father in the ghetto, and the 'inability of people to get the jobs still available.'"
Source: Craig Haney, Ph.D., and Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., "The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy: Twenty-five Years After the Stanford Prison Experiment," American Psychologist, Vol. 53, No. 7 (July 1998), p. 716.
11) 1.46 million black men out of a total voting population of 10.4 million have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions.
Source: Thomas, P., "Study Suggests Black Male Prison Rate Impinges on Political Process," The Washington Post (January 30, 1997), p. A3.
12) "Thirteen percent of all adult black men -- 1.4 million -- are disenfranchised, representing one-third of the total disenfranchised population and reflecting a rate of disenfranchisement that is seven times the national average. Election voting statistics offer an approximation of the political importance of black disenfranchisement: 1.4 million black men are disenfranchised compared to 4.6 million black men who voted in 1996."
Source: Fellner, Jamie and Mauer, Marc, "Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States" (Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch & The Sentencing Project, 1998), p. 8. Election statistics cited are from the US Census Bureau, "Voting and Registration in the Election of November 1996" (p20-504), July 1998.
13) One in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 years old is under correctional supervision or control.
Source: Mauer, M. & Huling, T., Young Black Americans and the Criminal Justice System: Five Years Later (Washington DC: The Sentencing Project, 1995).
14) At current levels of incarceration, newborn Black males in this country have a greater than 1 in 4 chance of going to prison during their lifetimes, while Latin-American males have a 1 in 6 chance, and white males have a 1 in 23 chance of serving time.
Source: Bonczar, T.P. & Beck, Allen J., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Lifetime Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, March 1997).
15) In 1986, before mandatory minimums for crack offenses became effective, the average federal drug offense sentence for blacks was 11% higher than for whites. Four years later following the implementation of harsher drug sentencing laws, the average federal drug offense sentence was 49% higher for blacks.
Source: Meierhoefer, B. S., The General Effect of Mandatory Minimum Prison Terms: A Longitudinal Study of Federal Sentences Imposed (Washington DC: Federal Judicial Center, 1992), p. 20.
16) Regardless of similar or equal levels of illicit drug use during pregnancy, black women are 10 times more likely than white women to be reported to child welfare agencies for prenatal drug use.
Source: Neuspiel, D.R., "Racism and Perinatal Addiction," Ethnicity and Disease, 6: 47-55 (1996); Chasnoff, I.J., Landress, H.J., & Barrett, M.E., "The Prevalence of Illicit-Drug or Alcohol Use during Pregnancy and Discrepancies in Mandatory Reporting in Pinellas County, Florida," New England Journal of Medicine, 322: 1202-1206 (1990).
17) Due to harsh new sentencing guidelines, such as 'three-strikes, you're out,' "a disproportionate number of young Black and Hispanic men are likely to be imprisoned for life under scenarios in which they are guilty of little more than a history of untreated addiction and several prior drug-related offenses... States will absorb the staggering cost of not only constructing additional prisons to accommodate increasing numbers of prisoners who will never be released but also warehousing them into old age."
Source: Craig Haney, Ph.D., and Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., "The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy: Twenty-five Years After the Stanford Prison Experiment," American Psychologist, Vol. 53, No. 7 (July 1998), p. 718.
For a more complete perspective, read Drug War Facts sections on Alcohol, Civil and Human Rights, Crack, Drug Use Estimates, Gateway Theory, Prison, and Women.
Source: Mauer, M. & Huling, T., Young Black Americans and the Criminal Justice System: Five Years Later (Washington DC: The Sentencing Project, 1995).
14) At current levels of incarceration, newborn Black males in this country have a greater than 1 in 4 chance of going to prison during their lifetimes, while Latin-American males have a 1 in 6 chance, and white males have a 1 in 23 chance of serving time.
Source: Bonczar, T.P. & Beck, Allen J., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Lifetime Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, March 1997).
15) In 1986, before mandatory minimums for crack offenses became effective, the average federal drug offense sentence for blacks was 11% higher than for whites. Four years later following the implementation of harsher drug sentencing laws, the average federal drug offense sentence was 49% higher for blacks.
Source: Meierhoefer, B. S., The General Effect of Mandatory Minimum Prison Terms: A Longitudinal Study of Federal Sentences Imposed (Washington DC: Federal Judicial Center, 1992), p. 20.
16) Regardless of similar or equal levels of illicit drug use during pregnancy, black women are 10 times more likely than white women to be reported to child welfare agencies for prenatal drug use.
Source: Neuspiel, D.R., "Racism and Perinatal Addiction," Ethnicity and Disease, 6: 47-55 (1996); Chasnoff, I.J., Landress, H.J., & Barrett, M.E., "The Prevalence of Illicit-Drug or Alcohol Use during Pregnancy and Discrepancies in Mandatory Reporting in Pinellas County, Florida," New England Journal of Medicine, 322: 1202-1206 (1990).
17) Due to harsh new sentencing guidelines, such as 'three-strikes, you're out,' "a disproportionate number of young Black and Hispanic men are likely to be imprisoned for life under scenarios in which they are guilty of little more than a history of untreated addiction and several prior drug-related offenses... States will absorb the staggering cost of not only constructing additional prisons to accommodate increasing numbers of prisoners who will never be released but also warehousing them into old age."
Source: Craig Haney, Ph.D., and Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., "The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy: Twenty-five Years After the Stanford Prison Experiment," American Psychologist, Vol. 53, No. 7 (July 1998), p. 718.
For a more complete perspective, read Drug War Facts sections on Alcohol, Civil and Human Rights, Crack, Drug Use Estimates, Gateway Theory, Prison, and Women.
http://www.lycaeum.org/drugwar/arm.html
Let us be clear: There is not now, nor has there ever been, a "War on Drugs."
What there is is a cynical program of political duplicity; the intent of which is not to prevent drug abuse (which it encourages), but to create a climate of distrust, fear, hostility, alienation, divisiveness, and violence within our society. The so called "War on Drugs" is in reality a war of cultural prejudice waged primarily against the young, the poor, the non-white and the socially disaffected to the advantage of the Elected, the Corporate, the Privileged and the Few.
President Nixon launched this war against American citizens in 1968, at a time of extreme political and social unrest. For Nixon, it was a method of "getting even" with "uppity blacks," "radical leftists" and "dirty" hippies" that he and the nefarious interests he represented (especially those who benefited economically from the war in Vietnam) regarded as "second class citizens" and "traitors" to the American way of life.
On the contrary: What we were doing then, and what we are doing now, is trying to liberate America from a reign of political and economic tyranny that is sustained by rhetorical propaganda and misinformation. We love America and the Constitution and wish nothing more than to see her succeed in her Great Promise of providing Freedom and Justice for All. Those who oppose this very High Aim, whether out of ignorance, greed or bigotry, are the true enemies of our nation and its Constitution.
Dividing Americans against themselves, making them mistrust, fear and wage war against their fellow citizens: This is what the so called "War on Drugs" was meant to do--and that is precisely what it has done and is doing--far more successfully than even Richard Nixon could have hoped. What better way to destroy the gains blacks were making through the Civil Rights movement than to flood the ghettos with drugs which addict thousands of users, offering the allure for "quick" money and escape from poverty, while simultaneously creating divisions and violent "turf wars" between ghetto gangs? All this while creating the political justifications and judicial sanctions for increasingly militaristic police "crack downs," arresting, incarcerating (killing when necessary) and ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of black men, their families and their communities.
After Nixon, both Ronald Regan and George Bush found their own uses for the "War on Drugs." Besides the political advantages of "getting tough" on the very crime and violence that prohibition inevitably engenders, drug smuggling by covert factions within the federal system itself created vast sums of unregulated money to fund illegal military operations outside our nations boarders. What began as a cynical attitude of social malice quickly turned into a bad habit of deception and corruption. Nothing, my friends, is more addictive than power.
At this point in our history--the election year of 1996--this insidious and increasingly malignant and militaristic policy is still with us. And to judge by President Clinton's appointment of General Barry McCaffrey as "Drug Czar," it may be about to get much worse. This so called "policy" has become such a part of our media conditioned perception of reality that it is difficult to imagine an America without it. Anyone who publicly opposes the inflamed rhetoric or tries to bring rational, informed discussion to the issue, is branded a "traitor," characterized as a "drug pusher" or worse--in precisely the same way leftists were branded as "communists" in the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Witness the forced resignation of Surgeon General Jocylin Elders after she took an informed and reasoned position of leadership on this issue. She understood, as more and more Americans are coming to understand, that making criminals of drug users not only does not solve the problems associated with drug abuse, it exacerbates them far beyond the harms of the drugs. Indeed, with forfeiture laws and the kinds of invasions of our privacy that it allows, the "War on Drugs" has put the civil liberties of all citizens in jeopardy.
It is time for us to ARM OURSELVES against this misguided tyranny with information, with conviction and with every legal strategy for a redress of grievances that our Constitution allows.
Thank You,
Let us be clear: There is not now, nor has there ever been, a "War on Drugs."
What there is is a cynical program of political duplicity; the intent of which is not to prevent drug abuse (which it encourages), but to create a climate of distrust, fear, hostility, alienation, divisiveness, and violence within our society. The so called "War on Drugs" is in reality a war of cultural prejudice waged primarily against the young, the poor, the non-white and the socially disaffected to the advantage of the Elected, the Corporate, the Privileged and the Few.
President Nixon launched this war against American citizens in 1968, at a time of extreme political and social unrest. For Nixon, it was a method of "getting even" with "uppity blacks," "radical leftists" and "dirty" hippies" that he and the nefarious interests he represented (especially those who benefited economically from the war in Vietnam) regarded as "second class citizens" and "traitors" to the American way of life.
On the contrary: What we were doing then, and what we are doing now, is trying to liberate America from a reign of political and economic tyranny that is sustained by rhetorical propaganda and misinformation. We love America and the Constitution and wish nothing more than to see her succeed in her Great Promise of providing Freedom and Justice for All. Those who oppose this very High Aim, whether out of ignorance, greed or bigotry, are the true enemies of our nation and its Constitution.
Dividing Americans against themselves, making them mistrust, fear and wage war against their fellow citizens: This is what the so called "War on Drugs" was meant to do--and that is precisely what it has done and is doing--far more successfully than even Richard Nixon could have hoped. What better way to destroy the gains blacks were making through the Civil Rights movement than to flood the ghettos with drugs which addict thousands of users, offering the allure for "quick" money and escape from poverty, while simultaneously creating divisions and violent "turf wars" between ghetto gangs? All this while creating the political justifications and judicial sanctions for increasingly militaristic police "crack downs," arresting, incarcerating (killing when necessary) and ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of black men, their families and their communities.
After Nixon, both Ronald Regan and George Bush found their own uses for the "War on Drugs." Besides the political advantages of "getting tough" on the very crime and violence that prohibition inevitably engenders, drug smuggling by covert factions within the federal system itself created vast sums of unregulated money to fund illegal military operations outside our nations boarders. What began as a cynical attitude of social malice quickly turned into a bad habit of deception and corruption. Nothing, my friends, is more addictive than power.
At this point in our history--the election year of 1996--this insidious and increasingly malignant and militaristic policy is still with us. And to judge by President Clinton's appointment of General Barry McCaffrey as "Drug Czar," it may be about to get much worse. This so called "policy" has become such a part of our media conditioned perception of reality that it is difficult to imagine an America without it. Anyone who publicly opposes the inflamed rhetoric or tries to bring rational, informed discussion to the issue, is branded a "traitor," characterized as a "drug pusher" or worse--in precisely the same way leftists were branded as "communists" in the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Witness the forced resignation of Surgeon General Jocylin Elders after she took an informed and reasoned position of leadership on this issue. She understood, as more and more Americans are coming to understand, that making criminals of drug users not only does not solve the problems associated with drug abuse, it exacerbates them far beyond the harms of the drugs. Indeed, with forfeiture laws and the kinds of invasions of our privacy that it allows, the "War on Drugs" has put the civil liberties of all citizens in jeopardy.
It is time for us to ARM OURSELVES against this misguided tyranny with information, with conviction and with every legal strategy for a redress of grievances that our Constitution allows.
Thank You,
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14117
Making War on the War on Drugs
By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet
September 16, 2002
Deborah Small is director of public policy for the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), the nation's leading organization working to broaden the public debate on drug policy by promoting realistic alternatives to the war on drugs.
Small is organizing the upcoming conference, "Breaking the Chains: People of Color and the War on Drugs" to be held in late September in Los Angeles. The conference is expected to bring together hundreds of community organizers, religious leaders, youth and elected officials to address the destructive impact of the drug war on communities of color.
Small talked with AlterNet about the drug war as one of the leading sources of racial inequities in America and what Americans can do to address the problem.
ALTERNET: Why is there so little awareness of the connection between race and the war on drugs?
DEBORAH SMALL: Because very few people talk about it. The targets of drug law enforcement; the resources available to assist those with substance abuse problems; the sanctions applied to people convicted of drug crimes; the demonization of drugs and drug users are all issues that have racial and class overtones that are rarely acknowledged, much less discussed. Additionally, those individuals and communities that have been most affected by the war on drugs have been reluctant to talk about problems related to the war on drugs, in part because of the stigma and shame attached to any involvement in drug activity.
As a nation we need to come to grips with the fact that there are two criminal justice systems in America: one for white Americans and one for everyone else. Our nation's drug policies are a leading source of racial inequities in our country and we need to start addressing this problem.
Is it also because the problem of drugs is defined mainly as a white issue in mainstream media – i.e. the danger of nice white suburban kids getting hooked?
It depends what the purpose of the media message is. If the goal is to justify government anti-drug propaganda - for example, the ads which aired during Super bowl Sunday that attempted to link drug users to the war on terrorism – or to support mandatory drug testing in schools, then the reason given is the need to protect kids from drugs. However, if the goal of the media message is to justify increased police presence in communities of color, or policies that impose severe penalties for minor drug offenses, then the reason given is that drug users and sellers are a scourge on such communities and need to be punished.
What biases about drugs, people of color etc are in operation here?
Generally, the bias is class-based with racial overtones. Poor people with drug problems are presumed to be criminals and are treated harshly by the criminal justice system. Affluent people with drug problems are deemed in need of help and are expected to seek treatment with the goal of getting well. Additionally, there is a presumption that drug use is endemic in poor communities of color – therefore not an anomaly and not an issue demanding serious attention.
The war on drugs has filled our jails and prisons with the poor and the young – who are disproportionately African-American, Latino, and Native American. In some states like New York and California, more African-American and Latino men are sent to prison each year than graduate from the state's colleges and universities. That's a sad commentary about our societal priorities.
So what are the main areas within this encompassing challenge that need to be urgently addressed?
Police use of racial profiling is now well documented. Blacks and Latinos are far more likely than other Americans to be stopped and searched by police on streets and highways throughout the United States. The same is true of Native Americans in many parts of the country. Prosecutorial decisions are also racially skewed.
So are sentencing practices, with blacks and Latinos often sentenced to longer prison terms and afforded fewer alternatives to incarceration. In New York, conviction for the sale of two ounces or more of a narcotic drug or cocaine requires a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years to life. As a result of this draconian law, New York has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of persons serving long sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. Not surprisingly, more than 94 percent of state inmates serving time for drug offenses are African-American or Latino. Under federal mandatory minimum laws, the harshest criminal penalties are applied to drugs such as "crack" cocaine (a drug used predominantly by poor persons of color), where the overwhelming majority of people arrested and convicted are black.
As a result, African-Americans and Latinos are losing their right to vote. So many people are disenfranchised that it has affected the outcome of national elections. This has an impact on entire communities and dilutes their ability to have adequate political representation and participate in government. It also makes a mockery of our claim of promoting democracy abroad when we deny basic political rights to so many citizens.
We also deny public assistance to former drug offenders, which not only prevents them from becoming productive members of society, but also threatens the well being of innocent children. Denying public housing to former drug offenders leaves them in the same social and economic circumstances that may have led them to commit drug offenses in the first place. We need to make sure that all Americans that need access to treatment receive it. An estimated four million children have at least one parent who needs treatment for substance abuse.
What needs to be done? What policy changes are you most optimistic about? Which are less likely and why?
We need to eliminate the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity (the staggering difference in penalties imposed for powder versus. crack cocaine offenses). We must eliminate mandatory minimums, which grant disproportionate power to prosecutors to extract pleas from defendants, and encourage cooperation by "snitching." We must stop arresting and prosecuting people for minor cannabis offenses. We need to restore voting rights to all persons upon the completion of their criminal sentence. We should provide access to drug treatment on request to those who need it. And we need to make clean syringes available to injection drug users to help limit the transmission of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C. And that's just for starters. I think all these are minimally required changes.
I'm optimistic about the possibility of achieving modest success in reforming some mandatory minimum drug sentencing laws and promoting more alternatives to incarceration for low-level drug offenders. But I'm less optimistic about getting federal funding for needle exchange programs and the removal of post-conviction sanctions - such as loss of voting rights, loss of eligibility for public assistance, student aid, and public housing.
Has the drug arrests scandal that broke in Tulia, Texas helped create greater awareness of these connections between race and the drug war?
The media attention has increased public awareness of some of the excesses of the drug war and has provided a clear example of the way people of color (particularly African-Americans and Latinos) are targeted for drug offenses. More than 10 percent of African-Americans in Tulia, Texas were arrested on drug charges on the word of an unreliable undercover police official without any corroborating evidence.
The only people arrested were African-American or whites in romantic relationships with African-Americans. It does not take a leap of logic to understand the racial implications of this action. The sentences imposed on the early defendants (the first defendant, a 66-year-old hog farmer was sentenced to 99 years in prison) were designed to send a message to the others about what would happen if they did not agree to make a deal with prosecutors.
The clear injustice of the cases and the impact they have had on the entire African-American community in Tulia has shocked the conscience of many Americans and made them aware that racism is still alive and well, and finding its expression through our prosecution of the "war on drugs."
Making War on the War on Drugs
By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet
September 16, 2002
Deborah Small is director of public policy for the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), the nation's leading organization working to broaden the public debate on drug policy by promoting realistic alternatives to the war on drugs.
Small is organizing the upcoming conference, "Breaking the Chains: People of Color and the War on Drugs" to be held in late September in Los Angeles. The conference is expected to bring together hundreds of community organizers, religious leaders, youth and elected officials to address the destructive impact of the drug war on communities of color.
Small talked with AlterNet about the drug war as one of the leading sources of racial inequities in America and what Americans can do to address the problem.
ALTERNET: Why is there so little awareness of the connection between race and the war on drugs?
DEBORAH SMALL: Because very few people talk about it. The targets of drug law enforcement; the resources available to assist those with substance abuse problems; the sanctions applied to people convicted of drug crimes; the demonization of drugs and drug users are all issues that have racial and class overtones that are rarely acknowledged, much less discussed. Additionally, those individuals and communities that have been most affected by the war on drugs have been reluctant to talk about problems related to the war on drugs, in part because of the stigma and shame attached to any involvement in drug activity.
As a nation we need to come to grips with the fact that there are two criminal justice systems in America: one for white Americans and one for everyone else. Our nation's drug policies are a leading source of racial inequities in our country and we need to start addressing this problem.
Is it also because the problem of drugs is defined mainly as a white issue in mainstream media – i.e. the danger of nice white suburban kids getting hooked?
It depends what the purpose of the media message is. If the goal is to justify government anti-drug propaganda - for example, the ads which aired during Super bowl Sunday that attempted to link drug users to the war on terrorism – or to support mandatory drug testing in schools, then the reason given is the need to protect kids from drugs. However, if the goal of the media message is to justify increased police presence in communities of color, or policies that impose severe penalties for minor drug offenses, then the reason given is that drug users and sellers are a scourge on such communities and need to be punished.
What biases about drugs, people of color etc are in operation here?
Generally, the bias is class-based with racial overtones. Poor people with drug problems are presumed to be criminals and are treated harshly by the criminal justice system. Affluent people with drug problems are deemed in need of help and are expected to seek treatment with the goal of getting well. Additionally, there is a presumption that drug use is endemic in poor communities of color – therefore not an anomaly and not an issue demanding serious attention.
The war on drugs has filled our jails and prisons with the poor and the young – who are disproportionately African-American, Latino, and Native American. In some states like New York and California, more African-American and Latino men are sent to prison each year than graduate from the state's colleges and universities. That's a sad commentary about our societal priorities.
So what are the main areas within this encompassing challenge that need to be urgently addressed?
Police use of racial profiling is now well documented. Blacks and Latinos are far more likely than other Americans to be stopped and searched by police on streets and highways throughout the United States. The same is true of Native Americans in many parts of the country. Prosecutorial decisions are also racially skewed.
So are sentencing practices, with blacks and Latinos often sentenced to longer prison terms and afforded fewer alternatives to incarceration. In New York, conviction for the sale of two ounces or more of a narcotic drug or cocaine requires a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years to life. As a result of this draconian law, New York has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of persons serving long sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. Not surprisingly, more than 94 percent of state inmates serving time for drug offenses are African-American or Latino. Under federal mandatory minimum laws, the harshest criminal penalties are applied to drugs such as "crack" cocaine (a drug used predominantly by poor persons of color), where the overwhelming majority of people arrested and convicted are black.
As a result, African-Americans and Latinos are losing their right to vote. So many people are disenfranchised that it has affected the outcome of national elections. This has an impact on entire communities and dilutes their ability to have adequate political representation and participate in government. It also makes a mockery of our claim of promoting democracy abroad when we deny basic political rights to so many citizens.
We also deny public assistance to former drug offenders, which not only prevents them from becoming productive members of society, but also threatens the well being of innocent children. Denying public housing to former drug offenders leaves them in the same social and economic circumstances that may have led them to commit drug offenses in the first place. We need to make sure that all Americans that need access to treatment receive it. An estimated four million children have at least one parent who needs treatment for substance abuse.
What needs to be done? What policy changes are you most optimistic about? Which are less likely and why?
We need to eliminate the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity (the staggering difference in penalties imposed for powder versus. crack cocaine offenses). We must eliminate mandatory minimums, which grant disproportionate power to prosecutors to extract pleas from defendants, and encourage cooperation by "snitching." We must stop arresting and prosecuting people for minor cannabis offenses. We need to restore voting rights to all persons upon the completion of their criminal sentence. We should provide access to drug treatment on request to those who need it. And we need to make clean syringes available to injection drug users to help limit the transmission of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C. And that's just for starters. I think all these are minimally required changes.
I'm optimistic about the possibility of achieving modest success in reforming some mandatory minimum drug sentencing laws and promoting more alternatives to incarceration for low-level drug offenders. But I'm less optimistic about getting federal funding for needle exchange programs and the removal of post-conviction sanctions - such as loss of voting rights, loss of eligibility for public assistance, student aid, and public housing.
Has the drug arrests scandal that broke in Tulia, Texas helped create greater awareness of these connections between race and the drug war?
The media attention has increased public awareness of some of the excesses of the drug war and has provided a clear example of the way people of color (particularly African-Americans and Latinos) are targeted for drug offenses. More than 10 percent of African-Americans in Tulia, Texas were arrested on drug charges on the word of an unreliable undercover police official without any corroborating evidence.
The only people arrested were African-American or whites in romantic relationships with African-Americans. It does not take a leap of logic to understand the racial implications of this action. The sentences imposed on the early defendants (the first defendant, a 66-year-old hog farmer was sentenced to 99 years in prison) were designed to send a message to the others about what would happen if they did not agree to make a deal with prosecutors.
The clear injustice of the cases and the impact they have had on the entire African-American community in Tulia has shocked the conscience of many Americans and made them aware that racism is still alive and well, and finding its expression through our prosecution of the "war on drugs."
What are some goals you hope to achieve through the conference? And how much can one conference do?
We have three major goals we hope to achieve through this conference, which are:
– to "connect-the-dots" for conference participants about the various ways that the drug war disproportionately impacts communities of color and relates to issues that many may already be focused on (e.g. racial profiling; sentencing reform; prison moratorium; HIV/AIDS prevention; restoration of voting rights; drug treatment services, etc.).
– to provide an opportunity for participants to share their personal experiences and perspectives about the impact of the war on drugs on communities of color, and to create relationships between people of various communities facing similar issues.
– to introduce participants to effective alternatives to punitive drug sentences. And to highlight successful drug reform campaigns to provide examples of projects that participants can initiate or support in their local communities.
In order to achieve these goals the conference has been designed to be informative without being overly academic; energetic in the sense of using mixed media and a variety of formats; interactive by providing maximum opportunity for participant interaction with each other and the program speakers; emotional as we want to touch people's hearts, as well as their minds; motivational since we want people to leave with a commitment to return to their communities.
We have three major goals we hope to achieve through this conference, which are:
– to "connect-the-dots" for conference participants about the various ways that the drug war disproportionately impacts communities of color and relates to issues that many may already be focused on (e.g. racial profiling; sentencing reform; prison moratorium; HIV/AIDS prevention; restoration of voting rights; drug treatment services, etc.).
– to provide an opportunity for participants to share their personal experiences and perspectives about the impact of the war on drugs on communities of color, and to create relationships between people of various communities facing similar issues.
– to introduce participants to effective alternatives to punitive drug sentences. And to highlight successful drug reform campaigns to provide examples of projects that participants can initiate or support in their local communities.
In order to achieve these goals the conference has been designed to be informative without being overly academic; energetic in the sense of using mixed media and a variety of formats; interactive by providing maximum opportunity for participant interaction with each other and the program speakers; emotional as we want to touch people's hearts, as well as their minds; motivational since we want people to leave with a commitment to return to their communities.
http://home.earthlink.net/~mmales/drugrace.html
California’s War on Drugs Targets Minorities
By Mike Males, for Justice Policy Institute, 27 October 2000
Blacks and Latinos are much more likely to be arrested and
imprisoned for drugs than Whites at all age levels despite
the fact that Whites display worse illegal-drug abuse problems
California’s youth and adults of color are going to prison for drug offenses at much higher rates than whites even though older whites display generally higher levels and the worst increase in abuse of illegal drugs.
Since the 1980s, older (over age 30) white adults have suffered rising rates of drug abuse while drug abuse declined sharply among younger (under age 30) people and among people of color. However, increases in imprisonment for drug offenses have been two to three times greater for people of color than for Whites over the period (as measured by absolute increases in drug imprisonments adjusted for population growth by age and race, the most accurate measure).
Today, older white adults display drug overdose death rates five to seven times higher than younger people of color, including for the major illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine (including crack), methamphetamine, and hallucinogens (Table 1). However, young people of color are three times more likely to be arrested for drugs and sent to prison for drug offenses than older white adults.
The result is that at all ages, a Californian of color is four to five times more likely to be imprisoned for a drug offense than a white compared to their rates of drug abuse. That older African-Americans still suffer rates of drug abuse deaths 50% to 80% higher than older whites does not justify a drug arrest and imprisonment rate among older blacks 4 to 8 times higher than for older whites. In general, harsher drug enforcement and imprisonment policies aimed at nonwhites are not necessitated by greater drug abuse problems in communities of color. In fact, young people of color display the largest declines and lowest rates of drug abuse of any group.
African-Americans and Latinos illustrate the “funneling” effect of current drug-law enforcement (Table 1). Blacks comprise 11% of the state’s drug abusers, but 22% of those arrested and 30% of those imprisoned on drug charges. Latinos comprise 20% of drug abusers, 32% of drug arrestees, and 36% of those imprisoned for drugs. Whites, in contrast, benefit from the “reverse funnel” effect. Whites constitute 66% of California’s drug abusers, but just 41% of those arrested and 30% of those imprisoned for drug offenses. Asians comprise 3% of drug abusers and 3% of drug-offense prisoners.
When arrested for drugs, minorities are considerably more likely to be charged with felonies. For all drug arrestees, 3.2% of younger whites and 8.6% of older whites wind up in prison, compared to 7.4% of younger people of color and 14.0% of older people of color arrested for drugs. Even when only felony arrests are considered, only 8% of younger whites and 15% of older whites are imprisoned, compared to 14% of younger-minority and 23% of older-minority felony drug arrestees.
The higher percentage increases in drug arrests and prison sentences for older white adults appear, at least in part, to result from growing drug abuse in that group. However, the increase in arrests and prison sentences among young people of all colors and older people of color occurred despite falling drug abuse levels.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table 1. Drug abuse, arrest, imprisonment odds by age and race, California, 1995-99
Whites over age 30 comprise:
36% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
60% of drug deaths
24% of drug arrests
25% of drug imprisonments
Blacks over age 30 comprise:
4% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
10% of drug deaths
14% of drug arrests
22% of drug imprisonments
Hispanics over age 30 comprise:
16% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
17% of drug deaths
12% of drug arrests
20% of drug imprisonments
Asians over age 30 comprise:
8% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
2% of drug deaths
2% of drug arrests
2% of drug imprisonments
Whites under age 30 comprise:
16% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
7% of drug deaths
19% of drug arrests
7% of drug imprisonments
Blacks under age 30 comprise:
3% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
1% of drug deaths
8% of drug arrests
8% of drug imprisonments
Hispanics under age 30 comprise:
13% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
3% of drug deaths
20% of drug arrests
16% of drug imprisonments
Asians under age 30 comprise:
5% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
1% of drug deaths
2% of drug arrests
1% of drug imprisonments
Note: “Percent change” results from dividing the most recent rate (1998 for overdoses and arrests, 1999 for imprisonments) by the corresponding rate for 1980 (arrests and imprisonments) or 1985 (overdoses). “Absolute change” results from subtracting the 1980 or 1985 rate from its corresponding 1998 rate. The 1998 or 1999 rate is per 100,000 population by race and age (<30 is age 15-29; >30 is age 30-69).
Sources: Drug arrests: Criminal Justice Statistics Center, California Department of Justice
Imprisonments: Data Analysis Unit, California Department of Corrections
Overdoses: Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services
Population: Demographic Research Unit, California Department of Finance
California’s War on Drugs Targets Minorities
By Mike Males, for Justice Policy Institute, 27 October 2000
Blacks and Latinos are much more likely to be arrested and
imprisoned for drugs than Whites at all age levels despite
the fact that Whites display worse illegal-drug abuse problems
California’s youth and adults of color are going to prison for drug offenses at much higher rates than whites even though older whites display generally higher levels and the worst increase in abuse of illegal drugs.
Since the 1980s, older (over age 30) white adults have suffered rising rates of drug abuse while drug abuse declined sharply among younger (under age 30) people and among people of color. However, increases in imprisonment for drug offenses have been two to three times greater for people of color than for Whites over the period (as measured by absolute increases in drug imprisonments adjusted for population growth by age and race, the most accurate measure).
Today, older white adults display drug overdose death rates five to seven times higher than younger people of color, including for the major illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine (including crack), methamphetamine, and hallucinogens (Table 1). However, young people of color are three times more likely to be arrested for drugs and sent to prison for drug offenses than older white adults.
The result is that at all ages, a Californian of color is four to five times more likely to be imprisoned for a drug offense than a white compared to their rates of drug abuse. That older African-Americans still suffer rates of drug abuse deaths 50% to 80% higher than older whites does not justify a drug arrest and imprisonment rate among older blacks 4 to 8 times higher than for older whites. In general, harsher drug enforcement and imprisonment policies aimed at nonwhites are not necessitated by greater drug abuse problems in communities of color. In fact, young people of color display the largest declines and lowest rates of drug abuse of any group.
African-Americans and Latinos illustrate the “funneling” effect of current drug-law enforcement (Table 1). Blacks comprise 11% of the state’s drug abusers, but 22% of those arrested and 30% of those imprisoned on drug charges. Latinos comprise 20% of drug abusers, 32% of drug arrestees, and 36% of those imprisoned for drugs. Whites, in contrast, benefit from the “reverse funnel” effect. Whites constitute 66% of California’s drug abusers, but just 41% of those arrested and 30% of those imprisoned for drug offenses. Asians comprise 3% of drug abusers and 3% of drug-offense prisoners.
When arrested for drugs, minorities are considerably more likely to be charged with felonies. For all drug arrestees, 3.2% of younger whites and 8.6% of older whites wind up in prison, compared to 7.4% of younger people of color and 14.0% of older people of color arrested for drugs. Even when only felony arrests are considered, only 8% of younger whites and 15% of older whites are imprisoned, compared to 14% of younger-minority and 23% of older-minority felony drug arrestees.
The higher percentage increases in drug arrests and prison sentences for older white adults appear, at least in part, to result from growing drug abuse in that group. However, the increase in arrests and prison sentences among young people of all colors and older people of color occurred despite falling drug abuse levels.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table 1. Drug abuse, arrest, imprisonment odds by age and race, California, 1995-99
Whites over age 30 comprise:
36% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
60% of drug deaths
24% of drug arrests
25% of drug imprisonments
Blacks over age 30 comprise:
4% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
10% of drug deaths
14% of drug arrests
22% of drug imprisonments
Hispanics over age 30 comprise:
16% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
17% of drug deaths
12% of drug arrests
20% of drug imprisonments
Asians over age 30 comprise:
8% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
2% of drug deaths
2% of drug arrests
2% of drug imprisonments
Whites under age 30 comprise:
16% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
7% of drug deaths
19% of drug arrests
7% of drug imprisonments
Blacks under age 30 comprise:
3% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
1% of drug deaths
8% of drug arrests
8% of drug imprisonments
Hispanics under age 30 comprise:
13% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
3% of drug deaths
20% of drug arrests
16% of drug imprisonments
Asians under age 30 comprise:
5% of state “at risk” population (age 10-69)
1% of drug deaths
2% of drug arrests
1% of drug imprisonments
Note: “Percent change” results from dividing the most recent rate (1998 for overdoses and arrests, 1999 for imprisonments) by the corresponding rate for 1980 (arrests and imprisonments) or 1985 (overdoses). “Absolute change” results from subtracting the 1980 or 1985 rate from its corresponding 1998 rate. The 1998 or 1999 rate is per 100,000 population by race and age (<30 is age 15-29; >30 is age 30-69).
Sources: Drug arrests: Criminal Justice Statistics Center, California Department of Justice
Imprisonments: Data Analysis Unit, California Department of Corrections
Overdoses: Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services
Population: Demographic Research Unit, California Department of Finance
Our good ole Govt.
Secret ties between CIA, drugs revealed
For nearly a decade the CIA, helped
spread crack cocaine in Black ghettos
By Rosalind Muhammad
West Coast Bureau Chief
LOS ANGELES--New evidence has surfaced linking the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to the introduction of crack cocaine into Black neighborhoods with drug profits used to fund the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contra army in the early 1980s.
This evidence has given credence to long-held suspicions of the U.S. government's role in undermining Black communities.
According to a series of groundbreaking reports by the San Jose Mercury News, for the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring, comprised of CIA and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents and informants, sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles.
Millions of dollars in drug profits were then funneled to the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (Nicaraguan Democratic Force), the largest of several anti-Communists commonly called the Contras. The 5,000-man FDN was created in mid-1981 and run by both American and Nicaraguan CIA agents in its losing war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, the Cuban-supported socialists who had overthrown U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
This CIA-backed drug network opened the first pipeline between Columbia's cocaine cartels and the Black neighborhoods of Compton and Los Angeles, according to the Mercury News.
In time, the cocaine that flooded Los Angeles helped spark a "crack explosion" in urban America and provided the cash and connections needed for Los Angeles's gangs to buy Uzi sub-machine guns, AK-47 rifles, and other assault weapons that would fuel deadly gang turf wars, drive-by shootings, murders and robberies -- courtesy of the U.S. government, according to the article.
"While the FDN's war is barely a memory today, Black America is still dealing with its poisonous side effects. Urban neighborhoods are grappling with legions of homeless crack addicts. Thousands of young Black men are serving long prison sentences for selling cocaine -- a drug that was virtually unobtainable in Black neighborhoods before members of the CIA's army started bring it into South Central in the 1980s at bargain basement prices," wrote Mercury News reporter Gary Webb, in the first installment of the shocking series of reports.
Although the Mercury News details the activities of numerous Nicaraguan and American informants and ties involved in the drug-gun trade, three men are cited as key players: Norwin Meneses, a Nicaraguan smuggler and FDN boss; Danilo Blandon, a cocaine supplier, top FDN civilian leader in California, and DEA informant; and Ricky Donnell Ross, a South Central Los Angeles high school dropout and drug trafficker of mythic proportions, who was Mr. Blandon's biggest customer.
According to the Mercury News article, for the better part of a decade, "Freeway Rick," as he was nicknamed, was unaware of his supplier's military and political connections.
But together, the trio was directly and indirectly responsible for introducing and selling crack cocaine as far away as Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Dayton and St. Louis.
Ricky Ross' street connections, ability to obtain cocaine at low prices and deals that allowed him to receive drugs from Contra-CIA operatives with no money upfront helped him to undercut other dealers and quickly spread crack. He also sold crack wholesale to gangs across the country, said the Mercury News report.
Most of the information surrounding the CIA's involvement in the crack trade came from testimony in the March drug trafficking trial of Mr. Ross, 36, who, along with two other men were convicted of cocaine conspiracy charges in San Diego.
A federal judge indefinitely postponed Mr. Ross's Aug. 23 sentencing to grant his lawyer time to try to show that federal authorities misused DEA agent Mr. Blandon to entrap Mr. Ross in a "reverse" sting last year. Mr. Ross could receive life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Records show that Mr. Ross was still behind bars in Cincinnati in 1994, awaiting parole, when San Diego DEA agents targeted him for the reverse sting-- one in which government agents provide the drugs and the target provides the cash.
Though Mr. Blandon has admitted to crimes that have sent others away for life, the U.S. Justice Department turned him loose on unsupervised probation in 1994 after only 28 months behind bars and has paid him more than $166,000 since, court records show.
Mr. Blandon's boss in the FDN's cocaine operation, Norwin Meneses, has never spent a day in a U.S. prison, even though the federal government has been aware of his cocaine dealings since at least 1974, according to the Mercury News article.
For years, writers, authors, activists, gang members and others have implicated the U.S. government in the deadly crack cocaine-gun trade.
Many have charged the U.S. government with supplying gang members with these tools in an effort to undermine and eradicate the Black community through wanton murder, drug addiction and crime.
Some believe crack did not become an "American problem" until the drug began hitting white neighborhoods and affecting white children.
On Aug. 23, the Los Angeles City Council, responding to pressure by the Los Angeles Chapter of the Black American Political Association of California (BAPAC), asked U.S. Atty. Janet Reno to investigate the government's involvement in the alleged sale of illegal street drugs in Los Angeles' Black community to support the CIA-backed Contras.
BAPAC vice chairman Glen Brown told The Final Call that a federal agency monitored by a civilian advisory board is one way the government could investigate the matter because "we can't have people who are responsible for this investigate themselves."
BAPAC, a statewide coalition of political activists, has also demanded that the U.S. government provide the necessary funding, materials and labor to rebuild urban areas destroyed by crack cocaine, as well as the necessary medical care, education, counseling, and vocational training to restore shattered lives.
Long-term Los Angeles activists Chilton Alphonse, founder of the Community Youth Sports & Arts Foundation, which aids former gang members, said he briefly assisted Ricky Ross when the drug dealer was paroled from prison inn October 1994, after serving about half of a 10-year prison sentence in Cincinnati in exchange for his testimony against corrupt Los Angeles police detectives.
"He came back to Los Angeles and tried to get his life together," Mr. Alphonse said. "Rick was a legend in the streets. But he flipped (testified against law enforcement officers). He said they used him to skim money from him."
Mr. Alphonse was referring to Mr. Ross's 1991 testimony against Los Angeles Police Department narcotics detectives who had been fired or indicted along with dozens of deputies from the Los Angeles County sheriff's elite narcotics squads for allegedly beating suspects, stealing drug money and planting evidence.
Mr. Alphonse, who now resides in Alabama, said he has warned for years that the flood of crack cocaine and assault weapons into the Black community was not the doing of the Bloods and Crips.
"Inner city youth don't have the resources to manufacture cocaine or ship in guns," Mr. Alphonse said.
Others agree.
In December 1989, while head of the NAACP Los Angeles Chapter, Anthony A. Samad (then Anthony Essex) announced his findings that some Bloods and Crips members had implicated the U.S. government in the ruthless crack and assault weapons trade among Los Angeles street gangs. Mr. Samad said that he learned this after extensive interviews with gang members housed in Los Angeles County Jail. But he was largely ignored by Black elected officials, he said who sided with law enforcement.
"Gang members charged then that gang rivalry and drug wars were being perpetuated by the police and the government," said Mr. Samad, who is now president of Samad & Associates, a consulting firm.
Henry Stuckey, of Stop the Violence/Increase the Peace, said that government involvement in community drug trafficking was common knowledge in some circles.
"Obviously African American males didn't have planes and boats to move the guns and narcotics into the Black community." Mr. Stuckey said.
Mr. Stuckey said that Black and Latino youths must be appraised of the government's involvement in order to understand that their communities will continue to be the dumping grounds for guns and drugs unless the youths "do for self."
"I do think that the blame that was laid on the gangs was wrong," Mr. Stuckey said. "But I can't say that it vindicates them for their actions because they had a choice in the matter. (Still) it's horrible that the government targeted our youth."
Roland Freeman, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Chapter of the International Campaign to Free Geronimo Pratt, is a former member of the Black Panther Party. The BPP was targeted and ultimately nullified by FBI counterintelligence programs.
Mr. Freeman said he knows firsthand of the deceit of which the government is capable; a government, he said, that tries to "set itself up as if it's higher than God when really it's lower than the devil."
"(They put) small pox in the Indian's blankets and gave them fire water," Mr. Freeman said. "They make drugs available to Blacks and other minorities. It only surprises me that (the CIA) got caught."
Secret ties between CIA, drugs revealed
For nearly a decade the CIA, helped
spread crack cocaine in Black ghettos
By Rosalind Muhammad
West Coast Bureau Chief
LOS ANGELES--New evidence has surfaced linking the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to the introduction of crack cocaine into Black neighborhoods with drug profits used to fund the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contra army in the early 1980s.
This evidence has given credence to long-held suspicions of the U.S. government's role in undermining Black communities.
According to a series of groundbreaking reports by the San Jose Mercury News, for the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring, comprised of CIA and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents and informants, sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles.
Millions of dollars in drug profits were then funneled to the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (Nicaraguan Democratic Force), the largest of several anti-Communists commonly called the Contras. The 5,000-man FDN was created in mid-1981 and run by both American and Nicaraguan CIA agents in its losing war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, the Cuban-supported socialists who had overthrown U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
This CIA-backed drug network opened the first pipeline between Columbia's cocaine cartels and the Black neighborhoods of Compton and Los Angeles, according to the Mercury News.
In time, the cocaine that flooded Los Angeles helped spark a "crack explosion" in urban America and provided the cash and connections needed for Los Angeles's gangs to buy Uzi sub-machine guns, AK-47 rifles, and other assault weapons that would fuel deadly gang turf wars, drive-by shootings, murders and robberies -- courtesy of the U.S. government, according to the article.
"While the FDN's war is barely a memory today, Black America is still dealing with its poisonous side effects. Urban neighborhoods are grappling with legions of homeless crack addicts. Thousands of young Black men are serving long prison sentences for selling cocaine -- a drug that was virtually unobtainable in Black neighborhoods before members of the CIA's army started bring it into South Central in the 1980s at bargain basement prices," wrote Mercury News reporter Gary Webb, in the first installment of the shocking series of reports.
Although the Mercury News details the activities of numerous Nicaraguan and American informants and ties involved in the drug-gun trade, three men are cited as key players: Norwin Meneses, a Nicaraguan smuggler and FDN boss; Danilo Blandon, a cocaine supplier, top FDN civilian leader in California, and DEA informant; and Ricky Donnell Ross, a South Central Los Angeles high school dropout and drug trafficker of mythic proportions, who was Mr. Blandon's biggest customer.
According to the Mercury News article, for the better part of a decade, "Freeway Rick," as he was nicknamed, was unaware of his supplier's military and political connections.
But together, the trio was directly and indirectly responsible for introducing and selling crack cocaine as far away as Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Dayton and St. Louis.
Ricky Ross' street connections, ability to obtain cocaine at low prices and deals that allowed him to receive drugs from Contra-CIA operatives with no money upfront helped him to undercut other dealers and quickly spread crack. He also sold crack wholesale to gangs across the country, said the Mercury News report.
Most of the information surrounding the CIA's involvement in the crack trade came from testimony in the March drug trafficking trial of Mr. Ross, 36, who, along with two other men were convicted of cocaine conspiracy charges in San Diego.
A federal judge indefinitely postponed Mr. Ross's Aug. 23 sentencing to grant his lawyer time to try to show that federal authorities misused DEA agent Mr. Blandon to entrap Mr. Ross in a "reverse" sting last year. Mr. Ross could receive life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Records show that Mr. Ross was still behind bars in Cincinnati in 1994, awaiting parole, when San Diego DEA agents targeted him for the reverse sting-- one in which government agents provide the drugs and the target provides the cash.
Though Mr. Blandon has admitted to crimes that have sent others away for life, the U.S. Justice Department turned him loose on unsupervised probation in 1994 after only 28 months behind bars and has paid him more than $166,000 since, court records show.
Mr. Blandon's boss in the FDN's cocaine operation, Norwin Meneses, has never spent a day in a U.S. prison, even though the federal government has been aware of his cocaine dealings since at least 1974, according to the Mercury News article.
For years, writers, authors, activists, gang members and others have implicated the U.S. government in the deadly crack cocaine-gun trade.
Many have charged the U.S. government with supplying gang members with these tools in an effort to undermine and eradicate the Black community through wanton murder, drug addiction and crime.
Some believe crack did not become an "American problem" until the drug began hitting white neighborhoods and affecting white children.
On Aug. 23, the Los Angeles City Council, responding to pressure by the Los Angeles Chapter of the Black American Political Association of California (BAPAC), asked U.S. Atty. Janet Reno to investigate the government's involvement in the alleged sale of illegal street drugs in Los Angeles' Black community to support the CIA-backed Contras.
BAPAC vice chairman Glen Brown told The Final Call that a federal agency monitored by a civilian advisory board is one way the government could investigate the matter because "we can't have people who are responsible for this investigate themselves."
BAPAC, a statewide coalition of political activists, has also demanded that the U.S. government provide the necessary funding, materials and labor to rebuild urban areas destroyed by crack cocaine, as well as the necessary medical care, education, counseling, and vocational training to restore shattered lives.
Long-term Los Angeles activists Chilton Alphonse, founder of the Community Youth Sports & Arts Foundation, which aids former gang members, said he briefly assisted Ricky Ross when the drug dealer was paroled from prison inn October 1994, after serving about half of a 10-year prison sentence in Cincinnati in exchange for his testimony against corrupt Los Angeles police detectives.
"He came back to Los Angeles and tried to get his life together," Mr. Alphonse said. "Rick was a legend in the streets. But he flipped (testified against law enforcement officers). He said they used him to skim money from him."
Mr. Alphonse was referring to Mr. Ross's 1991 testimony against Los Angeles Police Department narcotics detectives who had been fired or indicted along with dozens of deputies from the Los Angeles County sheriff's elite narcotics squads for allegedly beating suspects, stealing drug money and planting evidence.
Mr. Alphonse, who now resides in Alabama, said he has warned for years that the flood of crack cocaine and assault weapons into the Black community was not the doing of the Bloods and Crips.
"Inner city youth don't have the resources to manufacture cocaine or ship in guns," Mr. Alphonse said.
Others agree.
In December 1989, while head of the NAACP Los Angeles Chapter, Anthony A. Samad (then Anthony Essex) announced his findings that some Bloods and Crips members had implicated the U.S. government in the ruthless crack and assault weapons trade among Los Angeles street gangs. Mr. Samad said that he learned this after extensive interviews with gang members housed in Los Angeles County Jail. But he was largely ignored by Black elected officials, he said who sided with law enforcement.
"Gang members charged then that gang rivalry and drug wars were being perpetuated by the police and the government," said Mr. Samad, who is now president of Samad & Associates, a consulting firm.
Henry Stuckey, of Stop the Violence/Increase the Peace, said that government involvement in community drug trafficking was common knowledge in some circles.
"Obviously African American males didn't have planes and boats to move the guns and narcotics into the Black community." Mr. Stuckey said.
Mr. Stuckey said that Black and Latino youths must be appraised of the government's involvement in order to understand that their communities will continue to be the dumping grounds for guns and drugs unless the youths "do for self."
"I do think that the blame that was laid on the gangs was wrong," Mr. Stuckey said. "But I can't say that it vindicates them for their actions because they had a choice in the matter. (Still) it's horrible that the government targeted our youth."
Roland Freeman, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Chapter of the International Campaign to Free Geronimo Pratt, is a former member of the Black Panther Party. The BPP was targeted and ultimately nullified by FBI counterintelligence programs.
Mr. Freeman said he knows firsthand of the deceit of which the government is capable; a government, he said, that tries to "set itself up as if it's higher than God when really it's lower than the devil."
"(They put) small pox in the Indian's blankets and gave them fire water," Mr. Freeman said. "They make drugs available to Blacks and other minorities. It only surprises me that (the CIA) got caught."
McleanHatch you said to EDJ that it is unnacceptable to legalize drugs.....Well EDJ has a point about legalizing drugs
First of all have you ever heard about the Prohibition Act in 1920? Basically The prohibition act banned alcohol, it was suppose reduced, crime, poverty, deathrates, and improve our economy. Instead of decreasing the amount of alcohol consumption it increased it..LOL!! Instead of causing a decrease in crime it caused an EXPLOSION of crime in the early 1920's. Like cocaine, heroine, and other illegal drugs, alcohol which has now become an illegal drug caused a lot of black market violence. People had to be STRAPPED, much like those drug dealers you were talking about here
"how can u say crack cocaine isnt a violence offense. dealers gotta carry guns to protect themselves from jackers and theives, users got to commit violent crimes to pay for their habits. non-voilent your kidding me right????"
PROHIBITION ACT 1920: "The contributing factor to the sudden increase of felonies was the organization of crime, especially in large cities. Because liquor was no longer legally available, the public turned to gangsters who readily took on the bootlegging industry and supplied them with liquor. On account of the industry being so profitable, more gangsters became involved in the money-making business. Crime became so organized because “criminal groups organize around the steady source of income provided by laws against victimless crimes such as consuming alcohol” (Thorton, 13). As a result of the money involved in the bootlegging industry, there was much rival between gangs. The profit motive caused over four hundred gang related murders a year in Chicago alone (Bowen, 175)."
Doesn't that sound like some street gangs nowadays running the drug-trafficking?
Beer was bigger then ever during the 1920's.....
You maybe thinking "Well Beer is beer, and is not as dangerous as heroine or coke"...HA! Not in the 1920's, since alcohol was being made in the black market like cocaine and other drugs are now the content was not as good. Lets keep in mind that drug dealers only care about the sale and not really about the content of there drug or drugs. Thats why you got some folks selling phony ass shit on the market, they don't give a fuck what happens to you when you use it, they don't give a fuck if it's bammer. Well during the 1920's when alcohol was illegal some people were making beer in there bathtub, and they did not have the equipment to measure the percentage of alcohol that was in there drinks. So guess what happened? MANY MANY MANY People went BLIND because of the percentage of alcohol they were being served in there drinks. Some people were being served 25+% worth of alcohol in there drinks. And imagine how drunk they looked walking out of these secret bars? And those were not the only illnesses suffered because of the prohibition act. It was not until the government lifted the prohibition act did beer get safer. The government took control of the alcohol market, and made special REGULATIONS and that is why alcohol is much safer now. And the biggest thing was that the government had the authority to regulate WHO got to drink alcohol. You have to be the age of 21 to be able to buy alcohol. They could do the same with certain illegal drugs. They could take out percent of whatever it is that makes peope high and restrict the age of people that could purchase it.
Don't get me wrong alcohol is STILL very dangerous, because if you consume enough of it....
1) Takes you longer to react to situations
2) You have trouble exercising judgement
3) You are not as well coordinated
4) Blackouts
5) Hangovers
6)DEATH!
You've seen the "Don'te let your friends drive drunk" ads before...
Chronic Alcohol consumption can cause...
1) Failiure to the heart
2) Liver
3) Brain
4) Stomach
and of course
5) DEATH!
Drug use could very easily go down the same path as alcohol. The government can produce it put restrictions on who uses it. You also got to put in mind that if drugs become legal the interest from teens will most likely go down, because you have to admit people like the fact that drugs are illegal, it's FORBIDDEN, legalizing drugs takes away from that. No one should expect there to never be another case of drug abuse; those same addictive people earlier mentioned will still struggle with drug abuse, but at least their choice to use drugs will be an informed choice, and doctors can be certain of what the people are taking into their bodies because it has been regulated by the FDA.
So to say it's unnacceptable is not right, EDJ has a point. The truth is that there is definitly hypocrisy going on with the legalization of alcohol.
You think alcohol is much safer go to a Raider game..lol!!
First of all have you ever heard about the Prohibition Act in 1920? Basically The prohibition act banned alcohol, it was suppose reduced, crime, poverty, deathrates, and improve our economy. Instead of decreasing the amount of alcohol consumption it increased it..LOL!! Instead of causing a decrease in crime it caused an EXPLOSION of crime in the early 1920's. Like cocaine, heroine, and other illegal drugs, alcohol which has now become an illegal drug caused a lot of black market violence. People had to be STRAPPED, much like those drug dealers you were talking about here
"how can u say crack cocaine isnt a violence offense. dealers gotta carry guns to protect themselves from jackers and theives, users got to commit violent crimes to pay for their habits. non-voilent your kidding me right????"
PROHIBITION ACT 1920: "The contributing factor to the sudden increase of felonies was the organization of crime, especially in large cities. Because liquor was no longer legally available, the public turned to gangsters who readily took on the bootlegging industry and supplied them with liquor. On account of the industry being so profitable, more gangsters became involved in the money-making business. Crime became so organized because “criminal groups organize around the steady source of income provided by laws against victimless crimes such as consuming alcohol” (Thorton, 13). As a result of the money involved in the bootlegging industry, there was much rival between gangs. The profit motive caused over four hundred gang related murders a year in Chicago alone (Bowen, 175)."
Doesn't that sound like some street gangs nowadays running the drug-trafficking?
Beer was bigger then ever during the 1920's.....
You maybe thinking "Well Beer is beer, and is not as dangerous as heroine or coke"...HA! Not in the 1920's, since alcohol was being made in the black market like cocaine and other drugs are now the content was not as good. Lets keep in mind that drug dealers only care about the sale and not really about the content of there drug or drugs. Thats why you got some folks selling phony ass shit on the market, they don't give a fuck what happens to you when you use it, they don't give a fuck if it's bammer. Well during the 1920's when alcohol was illegal some people were making beer in there bathtub, and they did not have the equipment to measure the percentage of alcohol that was in there drinks. So guess what happened? MANY MANY MANY People went BLIND because of the percentage of alcohol they were being served in there drinks. Some people were being served 25+% worth of alcohol in there drinks. And imagine how drunk they looked walking out of these secret bars? And those were not the only illnesses suffered because of the prohibition act. It was not until the government lifted the prohibition act did beer get safer. The government took control of the alcohol market, and made special REGULATIONS and that is why alcohol is much safer now. And the biggest thing was that the government had the authority to regulate WHO got to drink alcohol. You have to be the age of 21 to be able to buy alcohol. They could do the same with certain illegal drugs. They could take out percent of whatever it is that makes peope high and restrict the age of people that could purchase it.
Don't get me wrong alcohol is STILL very dangerous, because if you consume enough of it....
1) Takes you longer to react to situations
2) You have trouble exercising judgement
3) You are not as well coordinated
4) Blackouts
5) Hangovers
6)DEATH!
You've seen the "Don'te let your friends drive drunk" ads before...
Chronic Alcohol consumption can cause...
1) Failiure to the heart
2) Liver
3) Brain
4) Stomach
and of course
5) DEATH!
Drug use could very easily go down the same path as alcohol. The government can produce it put restrictions on who uses it. You also got to put in mind that if drugs become legal the interest from teens will most likely go down, because you have to admit people like the fact that drugs are illegal, it's FORBIDDEN, legalizing drugs takes away from that. No one should expect there to never be another case of drug abuse; those same addictive people earlier mentioned will still struggle with drug abuse, but at least their choice to use drugs will be an informed choice, and doctors can be certain of what the people are taking into their bodies because it has been regulated by the FDA.
So to say it's unnacceptable is not right, EDJ has a point. The truth is that there is definitly hypocrisy going on with the legalization of alcohol.
You think alcohol is much safer go to a Raider game..lol!!
now i aint saying alcohol is good or bad but there is no way in hell that you can compare it to other hard drugs.
example
1. alcohol cant/ wont kill you with 1 shot
1A. crack can kill you with 1 shot
1B. Heroin can kill you with 1 shot
1C. crystal can kill you with 1 shot.
the majority of the people in this country use alcohol socially and in small amounts. which doesnt directly affect their lives personally and socially.
how much crack can be used in a social atmosphere.
instad of a father and son having a beer can you see them smoking crystal meth.
the thing is its not the same and it never will be. and it is a fallicy to compare the two as being simular. using such comparison will lead you down a slippery slope.
example
1. alcohol cant/ wont kill you with 1 shot
1A. crack can kill you with 1 shot
1B. Heroin can kill you with 1 shot
1C. crystal can kill you with 1 shot.
the majority of the people in this country use alcohol socially and in small amounts. which doesnt directly affect their lives personally and socially.
how much crack can be used in a social atmosphere.
instad of a father and son having a beer can you see them smoking crystal meth.
the thing is its not the same and it never will be. and it is a fallicy to compare the two as being simular. using such comparison will lead you down a slippery slope.