schoolsnotprisons

The history of drug prohibition reveals that America's drug policies are founded on racial prejudice and control. David Musto of Yale laid this out in his book, The American Disease. Anti-opium smoking laws based on anti-Chinese sentiment. Early 20th century cocaine laws based on hysteria that "cocainized negroes" were the principal cause of the rape of white women in the south. 1930s-era marijuana laws based on anti-Black sentiment expressed by the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger.

This is not simply about marijuana and race. The role of drug prohibition in America is to maintain white privilege.

Consider our drug policy: The ostensible goals are to save lives, to prevent crime, to keep drugs out of the hands of kids.

What does data show about how our drug policy works? The death rate from illegal drugs has grown fairly steadily since the early 1980s -- it is now more than triple it was then. We are not saving lives, and anyone who reads the newspapers knows that.

It is obvious to most observers that drug prohibition generates an enormous amount of crime. Look at Mexico. Look at "drive-by shootings." Think about the crime committed by folks who steal to get the money for their "fix." Think about the widespread corruption of police -- present in almost every jurisdiction in one form or another -- around the drug trade.

And obviously, kids have easier access to drugs than any population subgroup.

So our drug policy is not accomplishing its formal goals. Yet it continues to absorb $60+ billion per year. So it is doing something that the society wants done. Well, the majority society wants to maintain white privilege. This has been the case since the 1960s. The moment when the U.S. rate of incarceration changed from a half century of stability was the moment when the U.S. civil rights movement triumphed -- about 1970. At last, it was illegal to engage in segregation. At last there were voting rights. Discrimination in education and employment and housing were outlawed. So how, after the bloody resistance to the civil rights movement, does white society maintain its privileges? The war on drugs.

The face of the drug user, as presented in the news media, is usually black. We use terms like "youth at risk." As majority white audiences hear that term, in our mind's eye, what is the pigmentation of the youth who are "at risk?" Yet white high school kids are using cocaine at a rate that is three times the rate that Black high school kids are using cocaine, according to government drug survey data.

I don't think in the past 40 years the drug laws were created with racist intent. There was certainly a belief that people of color had more serious drug problems, and perhaps they need help. However in the Congress, since the early 1990s, there has been indifference to the unequal application of harms in the course of enforcing the drug laws. Since the early 1990s, the Judiciary Committees knew that the federal drug laws were being enforced in a grossly disproportionate way when it came to Blacks. Yet it was not until 2010 that the political will was strong enough to make Congress make some marginal improvements.

I want to draw a distinction between "racist intent" which implies an individual who has a racial animus, and the unconscious acceptance of racial preferences and racial handicaps, i.e. the benefiting from structural racism. The white public knows that blacks are being incarcerated at greater rates than whites, but to the extent that public thinks about that at all, it thinks that this is probably okay. Whites don't necessarily intend that this to be the case, but to the extent they are aware of it, the disproportionality seems appropriate and fulfills a white understanding about race and drugs. (I have heard well respected black officials say that because "crack is a black drug," the fact that Congress imposed severe penalties on much small quantities of crack cocaine than powder cocaine is evidence of racial animus. But many more whites are users of crack cocaine than blacks -- crack has never been a "black drug.")

I think in some ways the collateral penalties for drug offenses are reminiscent of the penalties of Jim Crow segregation. Under Jim Crow, an African-American had limited ability to travel, could not buy a home or live in certain areas, could not hold certain jobs, could not go to certain schools, etc. It was dangerous for a black person to walk down the street in many neighborhoods. These penalties were formally eliminated by the civil rights movement.

But the collateral penalties for drug offenses are an echo of the Jim Crow restrictions. For example, if you have a drug conviction and on probation or parole, you can't travel without permission of your probation officer. With a conviction, you are ineligible for public housing (and your family can be evicted for your offense). (However, a home "owner" will not lose his or her home mortgage or the federal tax deduction for the mortgage interest.) There are many jobs with licenses for which the person the drug conviction is disqualified: beautician, cosmetologist, barber, electrician, etc. This employment exclusion is very much like Jim Crow. And of course students with drug convictions get expelled under "zero tolerance" laws or denied financial aid. And "driving while black" leading to drug searches, the occasional arrest, and the forfeiture of cars is the modern equivalent of that Jim Crow era penalty.

One of my friends called me a "plainclothes freak." I am attorney, and the Congress was my client. I had the ability to have some influence, but I did not have a vote.

I realized more fully while working for Congress that the "war on drugs" could never be won. And I saw the mixture of hatred for drug users and indifference to their suffering on the part of policy makers. I also saw how the war on drugs was a growing threat to civil liberties, due process and the rule of law.

In the 1980s, I did not see lobbying by a prison lobby. The political dynamic itself was sufficiently anti-drug. There was a widespread feeling that drugs were among the top domestic social and political problems. I don't think campaign contributions from a prison lobby was any kind of factor in 1984, 1986 or 1988.

I started thinking seriously about drug policy in 1976 during my third year in law school. Keith Stroup, the founder and then Executive Director of NORML, came to Philadelphia to organize support for decriminalization. There was a decrim bill pending in the PA legislature. Keith was brilliant! He was so articulate. I thought he could be elected President of the U.S. I was inspired to testify in support of the decriminalization bill.

Nine months later, after I passed the bar exam, I went to the NORML national conference in Washington, DC at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill. I was blown away by the professionalism of NORML. At the continuing legal education sessions I heard some of America's most accomplished and skillful criminal defense lawyers teaching. I hoped that someday I could stand amidst their ranks.

The most astonishing misconception that was uttered in Congress in the 1980s was the phrase, "We have lost a generation to drugs!" I looked around the hearing room when this was being said and thought to myself, almost everyone of the staff in the room -- young lawyers who were on law review, men and women who had graduate degrees -- they were among the drug users. This was NOT a lost generation.

I think most Americans are fairly uninformed about drugs. Where would they get accurate information? From television??? From the newspapers?? Many Members of Congress are genuinely uninformed.

But informed or not, certainly many expressed extreme views (I am not sure how many of them "held" extreme views.) because they saw great political benefit. They knew they could get news media attention in their home district. They knew they would get praised by the police officials.

Thanks. Too much chat experience I guess.

I hope these new edits work for you now.