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Fact #3
The Drug War Is Fought Largely Against Urban Minorities and the Poor
Although its current proponents are not generally racist or elitist, the war on drugs has racist roots and profoundly classist and racist effects.
First, poor people get shoddier legal representation than wealthy people. In
addition, poor people often cannot afford to bail out so they have to await
their day in court in prison. This process takes so long that they have often
served enough time by the trial date to make innocence a moot point. However,
these deficiencies of the criminal justice system are not unique to the drug
war.
Because of the consensual nature of the
“drug” offenses, drug enforcement is highly discretionary. Drug offenses are
caught through proactive searches, pat-downs, sting operations, and informants.
People who live in poorer areas tend to have less privacy and more exposure to
police. For example, those living in a trailer park or urban subsidized housing
(“projects”) will have more police contact simply due to the population density,
and also because there is frequently more crime to investigate in poorer areas.
In addition, impoverished neighborhoods have more people subjected to the
criminal justice system and therefore there are more people looking to set other
people up to help themselves.
One of the hardest hit areas is poor
black urban neighborhoods. Unlike poor rural white areas that tend to be in the
hinterlands, black urban neighborhoods are perfectly situated to distribute
drugs to the wealthy commuters who work in the city and live in the suburbs. The
financial enticement to young black youth in the cities to participate in drug
dealing is enormous.
The reason more of America is not
irate over the loss of civil liberties is that the war on drugs is not focused
on suburbia. Most police know it is much easier to get away with illegal
searches of the persons and property of poor groups who cannot afford lawyers.
Poor people are also easier to convict. For these reasons and others suburban
and rural users of drugs are not targeted nearly as frequently.
This racial divergence is seen in the
results and even in the laws themselves. Despite the fact that blacks represent
only 15% of drug users they comprise 74% of those imprisoned for drug
possession. Although youth of all races use and sell drugs at similar rates,
minority youth represent 60%-75% of the drug arrests. The penalties for
blue-collar crack sold on city streets are exponentially harsher than those for
the powder cocaine sold in penthouses.
When Congress considered mandatory
minimums for methamphetamine they excluded Ecstasy. One of the few elected
officials willing to discuss drug decriminalization, former Baltimore Mayor Kurt
Schmoke, explained:
All information taken from You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos, Book I by Robert R. Arthur. Detailed documentation of sources can be found therein.
Page last modified August 29, 2007.