Failed Drug War Now Targets Whites
The headline was surreal. In fact, it was something that could have come straight out of Ripley's Believe it or Not. The headline screamed that the Sentencing Project, a Washington DC based criminal justice reform group, found in its annual report on imprisonment that more whites are going to jail for drugs, and that blacks are being jailed at a slower rate for drug offenses than in the past quarter century. For the past two decades the cherished article of legal faith and popular myth is that blacks commit most of the drug crimes in America, and therefore tougher sentencing, drug sweeps, crackdowns, and even racial profiling are legitimate law enforcement tools to apprehend the law breakers.
Yet the profile of a typical drug user has never been that of a poor, young black male. The drug profile is one of a middle-income white, aged 12-25. They make up a majority of the drug users in America. The Justice Department's 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse found that white students were four to five times more likely to sale and use marijuana, heroin, cocaine, (powdered and crack), LSD, PCP, and designer drug derivatives, such as ecstasy, mushrooms, speed, and ice, than blacks. In the decade since then the numbers of white versus black drug users has remained constant.
During the same period, legions of articles, news features, and TV specials have been crammed with stories of high-profile white stars, starlets, and athletes, and even a certain conservative radio talk show king who have openly bragged, cried and asked for forgiveness for their drug escapades. They create oceans of public empathy for their heroic battles against addiction. Yet, the lop-sided drug use by young whites ignites no outcry for mass arrests, prosecutions, and tough prison sentences for them. It would be political suicide for any public official to dare suggest that police profile white drug users as a tactic to win the drug war.
The Sentencing Project report isn't likely to change that. The way the police wage the war on white drug users and even where they wage it is far different. It's been done with no media or public fanfare, mostly in Midwestern states such as Iowa and Minnesota. There whole Meth mills are in operation and the buyers are young blue collar whites. Unlike crack cocaine, the Meth epidemic hasn't stoked public fears of gun toting gangs, bloody drug turf wars, and a soaring body count.
The result of the fiction that blacks are the prime drug users and abusers has been devastating in law and public policy. More than two million persons now jam America's prisons, and that makes America's prison and jail system the largest on the planet. Nearly half of those stuffing jail cells are African-American. They are more likely to get stiffer sentences in state and federal courts than whites for drug offenses. The weak, tepid effort by then President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s to ease and later a vague first presidential campaign promise by former President Bush to reexamine the glaring race bias in the drug sentencing laws, went nowhere. Congress said no to Clinton's effort to equalize sentencing for crack (mostly black offenders) versus powdered cocaine (mostly white offenders). Bush didn't utter another peep about the racial disparity in the laws after election.
Even before the Sentencing Project made public its surprising report on drug offense jailings, the debate raged over how and why so many blacks are in jails than whites even though far more whites than blacks use illicit drugs. The starting point is the arrest. Blacks are far more likely to be arrested for drug crimes than whites. And, once arrested they are far less likely to strike plea bargains, get summary probation, have their juvenile records sealed, and get referrals to drug diversion programs than whites. Countless studies show that police officials are much more likely to saturate poor black neighborhoods with small armies of cops.
This insures that more blacks will be stopped, searched, and arrested than whites which in turn further bumps up the arrest totals for blacks. The never ending vicious cycle of arrest, conviction, and tough sentencing, is more than a numbers racket, with African-Americans the perennial losers. The prison-drug nexus is a lucrative and self-perpetuating bloated growth industry that soaks up billions of tax dollars for jails, police, and courts. It allows politicians to burnish their credentials as tough on crime, and promotes the feel good fantasy that the police and politicians are really winning the drug war.
The one saving grace in the Sentencing Project report, though, is that with so many whites now being targeted in the drug war, that may be enough to call at least some public attention to the war's abysmal failure. At least that's the hope.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com
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Maybe the leadership could end the drug war and issue pardons to all those people that used drugs, are non-violent and never even sold them. After all, half the leadership did those drugs, too, they just never got caught.
This isn't so much about race as it is about the 'underclass'. Poor whites have become a part of this exclusive club of the unemployed or underemployed. They are easy targets for police and they are 'expendable'. Look at California prisons 11 billion a year to lock up 176,000 people, more than half locked up for non violent crimes. The 33,000 member prison guard union buys politicians to make sure there is yet more 'law and order' legislation passed, ensuring that the prison population won't decline. Corporate prison interests stock goes up in lockstep with increases in inmate population. The parole system is designed to make sure those who are released fail and are reincarcerated. Court funding is largely dictated by the # of offenders that go through the system, so charges are filed for the most trivial offenses, just to make sure the stats look good. Cops are frequently promoted on the basis of how many people they arrest...t
Yeah I saw that article on Fark's main page too:
http://www
The fact highlighted by everyone who mentioned the report was that the number of blacks in prisons for drug offenses decreased by 21.6% from 1999 to 2005. But what happened is that in 2004 the DoJ simply removed 6.5% of the data, which was everyone identified as mixed race black-and-white. In reality the number of blacks in prison only went down 12% from 1999 to 2005, to exactly 50% of the total, which is still nuts considering that according to the DoJ own data blacks only make up 14% of drug users.
And no mainstream media outlet noticed how the DoJ massaged the numbers, even though CNN, the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR all carried the report without once questioning the DoJ's data or pointing out their lie of omission.
STOP THE WAR OF TERROR ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!
REPEAL PROHIBITION AND ABOLISH THE POLICE STATE!
Yeah, lets spread the word that Whites are getting jailed in the War on Drugs and maybe, just maybe we will get some traction on quashing that so called WAR.
God forbid that whites should suffer, especially with the felon-can'
Mr. Hutchinson, I have one counterpoint and one objection:
Counterpoint: The Sentencing Project is relying on questionable methodology.
http://www
It would appear that the Bureau of Justice Statistics is trying to "pad the books" as it were, to try and counter the racist truth to drug prohibition (which, in my opinion, was implemented to subtly and acceptably replace Jim Crow laws, especially considering felony voter disenfranc
Objection: "designer drug derivatives, such as ecstasy, mushrooms, speed, and ice"
Mr. Hutchinson, you're very far off-base here. MDMA (street name ecstasy) was invented by Merck in 1914. It's hardly a designer drug, that's a label used by prohibitionists to demonize (certain) chemicals. Mushrooms are naturally occurring - are you accusing nature of producing designer drugs? Finally, 'speed' and 'ice' is like saying 'whiskey' and 'bourbon'. What is referred to as 'ice' (yet another demonizing label) is usually methyl-alp
A simple google search would have prevented a rather convoluted and misinformed statement, hence my objection.
Totally agree with you. The prison workers union points out that we have entirely too many drug cases mixed in with the general population of hardcore criminals in the system, which is making the situation highly dangerous.
It's way past time to change.
The correction officers union in California has a reputation of being totally self-absorbed with their agenda consisting of higher wages and benefits (for themselves). They seem to be unenlightened as far as rehabilitation concepts go, and actually want the incarceration rate to increase in order to secure more power for themselves. They are easily the second most powerful lobby that the governor and legislature has to cope with, right up there with the education, nursing, real estate, and tort interests.
It sounds like your OK with the war on drugs. We just need more whites in jail? You need to write to the black half of Obama, who said he is opposed to decriminalization of marijuana. I already wrote to his white half.
I suggest you re-read the article, go back and look at Obama's actual comments, and drop the racist innuendo.
LOL
There was a piece a few weeks ago from a California judge Jim Gray that everyone should listen too.
Here is his website:
http://www
Part One (Part 2 is on why drugs remain illegal)
http://www
Part 2:
http://www
Part 3:
http://www
PLEASE on this 4-20, Watch, listen, learn.
.........d
Good article.
The USA can learn a lot from Europe, or anyone else, if they are only willing to get down off their high horse. Start with marijhuana; weed smokers are not criminals, they're just people who like to toke. DUI isnt tolerated (fine or license cancellation), neither is being high at work. But putting people in jail is utter nonsence. Time to legalise the stuff with strict consumption laws (e.g. you want it then grow it). Half of Europe would be in prisons if the US was in charge here; thank God you're not.
Now, I need a J.
I remember coming back into Spain from Morocco in 1974. With my backpack and long hair the customs official looked me in the eye and in good English said, "Do you have any hashish with you?"
At that time possession of cannabis in Spain was punishable by a mandatory 6 years and a day in one of their delightful Franco joints.
I was clean as a whistle and my response to his query was to immediately burst out laughing, which the official knew was hardly the response of anyone holding a gram or two in his boot heel. I was waved right through.
The war on drugs is simply the most extravagant and tragically long-running failure of policy in US history. Granted, there are no absolute (much less simple) solutions to drug addiction, regulation, markets, etc. Neverthele
This U.S.'s refusal to honestly confront these costly fear-based laws has created a demoralizing and insanely expensive empire of waste and a cloak of ignorance about the nature of drugs themselves. I hope that our beloved country doesn't have to sink into financial oblivion before people open their eyes and "JUST SAY NO" to another generation of self destructive paranoia. Many of those who have seen the devastation of drug abuse up close make it their llfe's work to change drug laws and begin to free us from this war on our citizens..
Thinking people who really understand he numbers and yet insist on the status quo must resort to spectacular rationalizations, circular arguments and just plain fear to arrive at their position. When I see the money pouring forth due to our ignorant "war on drugs", the word "hemorrhage" comes to mind. I pray it doesn't prove lethal in these trying times.
You only need look to the number of comments on this story versus if the headline had read -- "Failed Drug War Proven to be Right in Targeting Blacks", to know the level of delusion in play.
If you really want to round up Whites in the "War on Drugs" - send some undercovers fed officers onto elite college campuses. You could arrest THOUSANDS of America's finest students across our nation. Throw the book at em. Within a year the War on Drugs will be thrown out.
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