The "War on Drugs" has spawned a crowd of racially discriminatory policies reminiscent of slavery and Jim Crow, with disastrous consequences for African Americans and other minorities. The repercussions of these policies range from severe losses of freedom to serious health threats. Some of these are listed below.

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Incarceration:

• Today, 1 in 4 black men aged 20 to 29 are in prison. Parole, probation, or imprisonment account for 1 in 3. [also see Prison Overpopulation]   

  Source: "American Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow," by Ira Glasser, hereafter "New Jim Crow."

• According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), 13% of all monthly drug users in America are black. (That's about the same as the percentage of the population that's black.) But 35% of those arrested for drug possession are black; 58% of those convicted of drug possession are black; and 74% of those imprisoned for drug possession are black. Also see "Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs."   

  Source: "New Jim Crow."

• There is a hundred-fold disparity between sentences for conviction of possession of equivalent amounts of crack cocaine (a drug used primarily by blacks and Latinos) and powder cocaine (a drug used primarily by whites), despite the fact that there is no pharmacological difference in the effects of the drugs on the body. Crack prosecution is 96% black or Latino. The prosecution of high-level dealers amounts to less than 5% of this.   

  Source: U.S. Sentencing Commission, The Sentencing Project, National Drug Strategy Network (above link).

• Drug possession, without violence or third-party deaths, is almost always prosecuted as a felony. Two-thirds of those prosecuted are black or Hispanic. By contrast, drunk driving is an offense that resulted in 22,000 deaths last year, almost all of which were treated by fines and as misdemeanors. It is committed mostly by whites.   

  Source: "New Jim Crow."

• A 2000 California study, "The Color of Justice,"  shows that minority youths are more that twice as likely as their white counterparts to be transferred out of California's juvenile justice system and tried as adults. Once in the adult system, the study found, black juvenile offenders are 18.4 times more likely to be jailed than whites for equivalent crimes; Hispanic youths are 7.3 times more likely to be imprisoned; and Asian youths are 4.5 times more likely to serve time.   

  Source: "The Color of Justice," a study by the Justice Policy Institute of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (above link).

• These punishment and prosecution disparities violate the right to equal protection under the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. 

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Disenfranchisement:

• 46 out of 50 states have felony disenfranchisement laws, which take away the voting rights of anyone serving time for a felony. Because of unequal prosecution of blacks involved in drug offenses, the greatest part of this burden falls on blacks.   

  Source: "New Jim Crow," Harper's article "This is Your Bill of Rights, On Drugs," by Graham Boyd (hereafter, Harper's article), Human Rights Watch/The Sentencing Project joint report - "Losing the Vote," (hereafter, "Losing the Vote").

• 13% of black men can't vote as a result of these laws. That amounts to 1.5 million people. In some southern states, the rates are as high as 30%; in Florida and Alabama, 40% of black men are disenfranchised.   

  Source: same as above. 

• Ten states - Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wyoming - permanently disenfranchise even rehabilitated felons who have served their sentences.   

  Source: same as above.

• Such laws violate the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states that race cannot be a bar to voting rights. 

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Restrictions of Movement:

• Racial profiling by police and customs officials has contributed to the problem of unequal prosecution and has subjected thousands of blacks to groundless and humiliating searches. In Maryland (where statistics have gathered) 17 % of drivers along a certain stretch of I-95 are black; but 73% of those who are pulled over and searched are black. (These numbers are similar to those suggested by information gathered in other areas.) These numbers are not the result of chance or of 'rogue cops' but of government policy. Cops on the lookout for drugs are trained to consider skin color a reason for suspicion.   

  Source: "New Jim Crow."

• In the majority of cars stopped and searched in this manner, no drugs are ever found. And despite the fact that the vast majority of the searched cars were driven by minorities, the few cars in which drugs were actually found belonged to whites just as often as they did to minorities.   

  Source: "New Jim Crow."

• In 1998, 51,000 people were selected by customs officials for body searches, ranging from hand frisks to strip searches to cavity searches. 96% of those searches were fruitless. Two thirds of those selected for searches were black or Latino.   

  Source: "New Jim Crow."

• Even the traditional standard of "probable cause," loosely interpreted as it often is, has been abandoned in the cases of so-called "Terry frisks." In Terry v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled that cops could frisk people on the streets based on reasonable suspicion that they were carrying a gun. In practice, however, reasonable suspicion more often than not amounts to skin color, especially if you're black and in the 'wrong' neighborhood.   

  Source: "New Jim Crow."

• In New York City, only 9,500 of the 45,000 recorded frisks over the last two years resulted in arrests, and many unfruitful frisks (hundreds of thousands, according to the New York State Attorney General) were never recorded. And, again, two-thirds of those frisked were minorities. [also see "American Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow," by Ira Glasser]   

  Source: "New Jim Crow."

• New Jersey's Drug Offender Restraining Order Act of 1999 prohibits anyone convicted or even just charged with a drug law violation from revisiting the area in which the alleged violation is said to have occurred, or any area affected by the violation. Because of the inequality involved in the prosecution of drug-related offenses, this law again amounts to an unconstitutional restriction on the movement of blacks and other minorities without due process. 

 

• Such policies and strategies are in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee to equal protection under the law, and of the Fourth Amendment's protection for unreasonable searches. 

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Drug Testing:

• Among the recent surge of unconstitutional drug testing policies is Michigan's policy of testing welfare recipients before admitting them for government aid, regardless of suspicion. Because welfare recipients are disproportionately black, this policy, in addition to constituting a violation of Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search, acts as another means of racial profiling in the search for drug offenders. The Drug Policy Litigation Project is currently challenging this policy in Marchwinski v. Howard.

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Health Problems:

• AIDS is the leading cause of death for blacks aged 25-44. 60% of these deaths from AIDS (90% of those of women and babies) are attributed to shared needles. Government limitations of needle exchange programs make it very difficult for drug users to obtain clean needles.   

  Source: National Vital Statistics Reports from the Center for Disease Control (at above site)

• Homicide is the leading cause of death for black men aged 18-25. This crime is not psychopharmological: turf wars (which result from drug prohibition), not drug craziness, cause deaths. A 1989 government study of all 193 "cocaine-related" homicides in New York City found that 87% were the result of turf wars and disagreements spawned by the illegal drug market; in only one case was the offender actually under the influence of cocaine.[also see Drug Policy as a Health Issue] 

  Source: National Vital Statistics Reports from the Center for Disease Control (at above site), ACLU Briefing Paper "Against Drug Prohibition" (hereafter, ACLU Briefing Paper)

The problem of racial inequalities on the problem presented by disastrous drug policies can no longer be addressed as discreet issues. American drug policies are literally killing and incarcerating a generation of American blacks. Something must be done to address these issues jointly. [also see "American Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow," by Ira Glasser]