Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske held a media briefing today to discuss the disproportionate impact our nation's "drug problem" has on African-American communities.
It is simply Orwellian for the drug czar to focus on the disproportionate impact of our nation's drug problem on African-American communities without acknowledging the disproportionate racial impact of drug law enforcement. According to the federal government's own yearly research surveys, African Americans use and sell drugs at similar rates at whites -- yet African Americans are arrested for drugs at 13 times the rate of whites.
While it is clear that drug misuse of both illicit and legal drugs can ruin lives and cause incredible pain, it is also clear that the drug war causes even more damage than drug misuse itself -- especially in African American communities.
While the Drug Czar's rhetoric is all about the need for a public health approach -- he even says we "can't arrest our way out of the drug problem" -- the reality is the drug war under Obama is as vicious and as racist as ever before. More than 1.6 million people were arrested last year on nonviolent drug charges, and the vast majority of these arrests were for low-level possession, not selling or trafficking. Almost half of these arrests -- 750,000 of them -- were for marijuana possession alone. While the Drug Czar talks about a "balanced" approach, the reality is that U.S. still spends two-thirds of the $50 billion-a-year "drug control" budget on enforcement, guns, jails and interdiction -- about the same proportion as under Bush and previous administrations. And, despite the new rhetoric about a "public health approach," the vast majority of people who have a drug problem still can't get treatment.
The reality is that despite the 40-year-old, $1 trillion drug war, our society is swimming in drugs. Though we urge people to be "drug free", we use caffeine to boost our energy, alcohol to celebrate and recreate, and prescription and over-the-counter drugs to modify our moods, lift us out of depression, and help us work, study and sleep. Yet only certain people and certain drugs are stigmatized, while others are normalized.
As Michele Alexander describes in her renowned book, The New Jim Crow, the war on drugs has had a devastating impact on African American communities, on a scale entirely out of proportion with the actual levels of criminal activity taking place within these communities. People of color are classified as "criminals," permanently trapping them in a second-class status and allowing a whole range of legal discrimination (in employment, housing, education, public benefits, voting rights, jury duty and so forth).
Leaders in the African-American community are increasingly speaking out against the drug war. The NAACP, Congressional Black Caucus and black state legislators are often at the forefront of sentencing and other drug policy reform efforts. Alice Huffman, the influential head of the California NAACP, has been an especially vocal proponent of drug policy reform -- she broke new ground by endorsing California's 2010 marijuana legalization initiative, drawing unprecedented attention to the disproportionate rate of marijuana arrests among African Americans.
Hopefully the media and the public will continue to question the Drug Czar about the disproportionate rate of enforcement in African-American communities. Why it is that young white people use and sell drugs at similar rates yet our prisons are filled mostly with African Americans and Latinos? What are the consequences of arresting our young people for small amounts of marijuana: the loss of college financial aid, food stamps, public housing and, in some cases, even voting rights? Money wasted and lives ruined ... and for what?
The fact of the matter is that we have to learn how to live with drugs, because they aren't going anywhere. Drugs have been around for thousands of years and will be here for thousands more. We need to educate people about the possible harms of drug use, offer compassion and treatment to people who have problems, and leave in peace the people who are not causing harm. And we need to take action against the incarceration of so many of our brothers and sisters who are suffering behind bars because of the substance that they choose to use.
Tony Newman is the director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance.
Follow Tony Newman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TonyNewmanDPA
The New Jim Crow Laws of the 21st century. Time for people to Rise Up against injustice!
Who's with me???
Viva la Revolucion!
The drug war just needs to end. It needed to end years ago. At this point its really just human sacrifice to profit private jails, and to pad the resumes of tough on crime (or black folk) politicians.
We petition the obama administration to:
Reconsider all petitions on cannabis without input from the ONDCP because they are required to oppose legalization.
According to Title VII Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 1998:
Responsibilities: The Director "Drug Czar" (12) shall ensure that no Federal funds . . . study or contract relating to the legalization (for a medical use or any other use) of a substance listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812) and take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form) that-- (A) is listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812); and (B) has not been approved for use for medical purposes by the Food and Drug Administration;
Therefore the office of the ONDCP is not reliable. Science has shown it to be less harmful than alcohol and for many a safe medicine.
We appreciate any help recruiting signature by emailing this to your friendlies, posting on facebook, twitter, etc.
If you support prohibition you've a helped create a black market with massive incentives to hook both adults and children alike.
If you support prohibition you've helped to make these dangerous substances available in schools and prisons.
If you support prohibition you've helped raise gang warfare to a level not seen since the days of alcohol bootlegging.
If you support prohibition you've helped create the prison-for-profit synergy with drug lords.
If you support prohibition you've helped remove many important civil liberties from those citizens you falsely claim to represent.
If you support prohibition you've helped put previously unknown and contaminated drugs on the streets.
If you support prohibition you've helped to divert scarce law-enforcement resources away from protecting your fellow citizens from the ever escalating violence against their person or property.
If you support prohibition you've helped evolve local gangs into transnational enterprises with intricate power structures that reach into every corner of society, controlling vast swaths of territory with significant social and military resources at their disposal.
If you support prohibition then you are guilty of turning the federal, state and local governments into a gargantuan organized crime syndicate, interested only in protecting it's own corrupt interests. -- The very acts for which we initially created governments to protect us from, have become institutionalized. Thanks to prohibition, government now provides 'services' at the barrel of a gun.
While those convicted of drug offenses are in jail or released as ex-convicts, they are prohibited, by law, from fully competing for resources for themselves of their families. Thus, there's less competition for white males in the battle to acquire scarce resources.
The racial angle is conservative politicans and those who desire conservative votes (Former NY Gov. Nelson Rockefeller) can appear "tough on crime" by proposing and supporting draconian drug laws which will primarily be enforced in minority communities.
Obama lied on the campaign trail about not prosecuting medical MJ
Nothing will change until Washington, California, Colorado Legalize and directly challenge the Fed's Stance on MJ.
The better question is why is ANYONE in prison over a plant? The answer: GREED!
The Obama administration had promised a hands-off policy on marijuana laws, saying the issue was best regulated at the state level. But the number of raids has been on the rise, and last month federal prosecutors in California announced a crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries, threatening to shutter state-licensed businesses.
Our drug prohibition policy is hopeless, just as Prohibition, our alcohol prohibition policy, was before it. Today there are more drugs in our communities and at lower prices and higher strengths than ever before. We have built large numbers of prisons, but they are overflowing with non-violent drug offenders. The huge profits made from drug sales are corrupting people and institutions here and abroad. And far from being protected by our drug prohibition policy, our children are being recruited by it to a lifestyle of drug use and drug selling.