Black Tar? More Like Blacks-Tarnished

By Cade Yates

Drug abuse is by no means as ‘new’ or any more relevant than it ever has been, as one would be lead to believe by the amount of media attention given to the subject nowadays, amidst this: the fourth decade of the official American War on Drugs. Opium has been a trading staple from the Far East since before the Americas were colonized, and even there the Incas had been treating altitude sickness traditionally by chewing coca leaves for centuries. Even today, right under the nose of drug enforcement, it is practically impossible to be in a group of, say, ten strangers and not be in the presence of at least one person who uses pharmaceutical drugs to function on a daily basis. So why a war—why a relatively new, focused attack on an issue that’s worn a number of masks since the beginning of time? Well, as evidence certainly seems to indicate, it’s because the War on Drugs virtually acts as a publicly-acceptable vessel to continue the longstanding American tradition of oppressing ethnic minorities, primarily African Americans.

This is not a revelation—it’s an issue that has been exploited in a variety of ways, and yet, still hasn’t improved. In an eye-opening book by civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander titled The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, on page 5 we find, neatly displayed for everybody, the fundamental outline of the issue, beginning with President Ronald Reagan in 1982. Basically, it’s an ugly case of revealing that the chicken indeed came before the egg; as Reagan was legitimately using “images of black “crack whores”, “crack dealers” and “crack babies”—images that seemed to confirm the worst negative racial stereotypes about impoverished inner-city residents” (Alexander, 2010), and found it to be successful in gaining support. So working off an assumption (drug convictions were not significant here before), Reagan targeted his war effort towards the poor inner-city predominantly black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, and logically, came out of it with exactly what he was funding enforcers to get: lots of arrests, lots of drug convictions, and just the statistical proof he needed to show the public, the purveyors of tax dollars, that the war effort was, in fact, working.

So before long, all the big cities similar to Los Angeles with poor racial inner-city neighborhoods received the same treatment, and needless to say, The War on Drugs essentially became the The War on Poor Black Communities. And the results are flinch-worthy; despite the fact that “studies show that people of all colors use and sell drugs at remarkably similar rates” (2010, pg. 6), we find a drug-related criminal record rate of a whopping 80 percent of big-inner-city African American citizens. A criminal record that revokes their future hopes of basic civil liberties, like the ability to be accepted for most housing, the ability to get hired for a well-paying job, and, most importantly, the right to vote. Incarceration in general leaped from 300,000 to 2 million, where it is today (the highest in the world), mostly drug convictions, and mostly black people, like Sharanda Jones, a non-violent first-time drug-offender in Washington, D.C., who was sentenced for life, she revealed in a Washington Post article. ‘The New Jim Crow’ indeed.

There is further evidence that agrees that the whopping disparity of black to white drug offenses is the product of systematic oppression and not an accurate racial attribute. In one particularly interesting study done in 2011 by Alana Rosenberg, Allison K. Groves, and Kim M. Blankenship summarized in an article titled Comparing Black and White Drug Offenders: Implications for Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice and Reentry Policy and Programming, 243 people in Connecticut arrested and eventually released for non-violent drug crimes (146 black, 97 white) were interviewed with questions regarding things like how the police interacted with them, how many times they’ve been harassed by authorities, what their drug of choice was, and so on.

Among the more alarming findings:

Blacks were convicted significantly fewer times than Whites (8.43 vs. 11.29 times), but they had significantly more sentences resulting in incarceration than Whites (9.09 vs. 6.15) and significantly longer sentences than Whites (1.74 vs. .71 years)…Blacks were more frequently charged with drug sales or possession than Whites (27% vs. 4%; 20% vs. 16%, respectively). Whites had more charges indirectly related to drugs, such as committing a crime to buy drugs, or being high while committing a crime (80% vs. 53%)…Blacks were 2.2 times (95% odds ratio [OR]: [1.07, 4.55]) more likely than whites to have a possession charge as compared with an “other” charge even after adjusting for other sociodemographic factors. Similarly, Blacks were 8.24 times more likely than Whites to have a sales charge…Blacks were significantly more likely to prefer marijuana (49%), while Whites were more likely to prefer heroin (52%). Crack was the second most likely single drug of choice for both racial groups (28% of Blacks and 13% of Whites).” (Rosenburg, Groves, Blankenship, 2016, pg. 138)

So the proof is in the pudding:

Given an even playing field, blacks are still, for whatever reason, committed way more often for crimes that other races are equally guilty of committing, if not even more guilty. It’s pretty common knowledge by now that marijuana (the most common drug black people got arrested for), compared to harder drugs like heroin (preferred by the white participants), is majorly less addictive, and has nearly nothing in the way of physical or social repercussions. In a lot of ways, weed has become the new crack in the eyes of law enforcement. Williams and Warf seem to agree, and point out in their insightful historical analysis called Drugs, Law, People, Place and the State: Ongoing Regulation, Resistance and Change that “alcohol remains the most widely used drug in the world even though it is forbidden in some parts and known to have harmful effects…the USA subsidize tobacco, which kills 480,000 people in the country annually, but make cannabis a Schedule I drug comparable to heroin even though there is no evidence that it has ever killed anyone” and mention that 700,000 annual drug arrests, mostly young ethnic men, are due to marijuana (Willams and Warf, 2016, pg. 6). Surely this begs the resounding question of why?

Alexander and Williams and Warf are coherent on the seemingly simple answer that The War on Drugs is something of a muscle-flex to prove that the government is trying to take steps towards a more virtuous society, but that the burden has fallen mostly on minorities due to historically pervasive negative media portrayal, and quite simply, the inter-generational persistence of racism in American society. But there are (obviously) flaws in the government’s strategy; namely, the globalization of drug trade and the scientifically proven theory of deterrence.

Arresting American citizens for possession of drugs is like treating the symptom and the disease. And, ironically, all the efforts focused in the internal issue have actually decreased the attention given to external issue of drugs being brought in to the country in the first place. Alexander points out that “The CIA admitted in 1998 that guerilla armies it actively supported in Nicaragua were smuggling illegal drugs into the United States” but that in their effort to sustain the War on Drugs in America, it “blocked law enforcement efforts to investigate illegal drug networks that were helping fund it covert war in Nicaragua” in order to patrol the poor black inner-city American neighborhoods (Alexander, 2010, pg. 6). So the people enforcing the War on Drugs were also essentially supporting the import of those illegal drugs. Similarly, Williams and Warf point out on page 7 of their report that certain anti-American entities, i.e. victims of cartel-related mass violence in Mexico who can’t earn citizenship and the Taliban (who hijacked the opiate trade in the middle East) play a major role in the international drug trade (William, Warf, 2016), and yet those causes goes untreated and it is the American citizens victim to prejudices who take the blow, and suffer the revocation of their basic liberties.

The other, more psychological, overlooked subversion to the War on Drugs is explained and put to test in another experiment conducted in Italy by Daniele Scarscelli, Rosalba Altopiedi, Roberta Dameno, and Massimiliano Verga, is the theory of deterrence. As they summarize themselves, “Even when the consumers are subject to a formal social reaction, our study underlines how this experience in no way inhibits illegal conduct but, if anything, consumers are driven to adopt strategies that make the acquisition and consumption of drugs less visible” (Scarscelli, Altopiedi, Dameno, Verga, 2012, pg. 491). They deduced this similarly by interviewing a large sample population of acquitted drug users, and coming to the shocking discovery that “91% of those interviewed said that they had carried on using illegal substances, without significant differences by sex, race, level of education, age or used drug” (2012, pg. 489). And this is a country with a softer approach to drug users, that offers therapy and help for those detained. The evidence indicates that detaining drug users, for the most part, does not even stop the problem, and has the reverse effect—prompts users to continue out of resent.

Given this information, it’s impossible to deny that The War on Drugs has created (or perhaps continued), maybe unintentionally, a far bigger social issue of racism, discrimination and oppression for ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans, and has succeeded much more in stuffing our prisons to maximum capacity than it has actually treating the issue. Is there a solution? In lieu with the analysis of Williams and Warf and the Italian deterrence study, it may just be that doing away with drug laws altogether is the only viable solution. It seems counter-intuitive, but take for example Portugal, a country that has already done this. Based on a study held by the Cato Institute, Time magazine summarized some eye-popping findings: “The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled” (Szalavitz, 2009). A head-spinning paradox, sure, but in our post-modern society, it is entirely plausible that a paradox could be the only solution to another, more harmful, racially-fueled paradox. Besides, the most dangerous illegal drugs come with their own physical repercussions which are surely much more convincing than penal sanctions. What’s the bigger evil: unimproving, time-tested racism or letting people learn their own lessons the hard way?

Reference List

Alexander, M. (2010). The New Jim Crow: Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press.

Horwitz, S. (2015, July 15). From a First Arrest to a Life Sentence. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/07/15/from-a-first-arrest-to-a-life-sente nce/?utm_term=.39b442e6537a

Rosenberg, A., Groves, A. K., & Blankenship, K. M. (2016). Comparing Black and White Drug Offenders. Journal of Drug Issues, 47(1), 132-142.

Scarscelli, D., Altopiedi, R., Dameno, R., & Verga, M. (January 01, 2012). Does fear of sanctions or sanctions discourage drug use? The point of view of a sample of illegal drug users in Italy. Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, 19, 6, 484-494.

Szalavitz, M. (2009, April 26). Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? – TIME.com. http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

Williams, S., & Warf, B. (January 02, 2016). Drugs, law, people, place and the state: ongoing regulation, resistance and change. Space and Polity, 20, 1, 1-9