Danilo Blandon's Use Of Crack Cocaine In The United States

CIA agents would go to mental hospitals and prison tell people to come with them to get their drug they are addicted to. Stated by PDF page 3 “For example heroin addicts were enticed into participating in LSD experiments in order to get a reward- heroin.” Researchers would bribe imprisoned people to gain willing test subjects in their experiments.

The story Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and The Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb have many topics. This book is based on “Dark Alliance”, Webb’s investigation series published in the San Jose Mercury News in August 1996. The story explains how the CIA brought cocaine to poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles to help finance war, how three people created the cocaine pipeline, and how the cocaine epidemic impacted the black community. This book also shows how The CIA used the Contras to import Cocaine. The story Dark Alliance has many plots.

American people identified the War on Drugs was launched to combat the crack crisis. However, Alexander claims that the crack crisis emerged some years after the War on Drugs was launched. She argues that negative racial stereotypes surrounding the crack crisis were widely dispersed on media. Reagan administration intensified a campaign to gain public and legislative support to the drug war in 1985. Suddenly media was saturated with images of black “crack whores” “crack dealers” and “crack babies” (p.5). There was a widespread discourse that crack crisis was a problem of the poor black neighborhoods. Thus, it was created and constantly reinforced the idea that African American people are drug addicts and dangerous. It is not surprising to know white people that is scared of black people. Moreover, in case you argue to someone that is scared of black people that s/he is being racist, they will claim that statistics prove that many African American are in prison due to drug issues.

The main race being incarcerated and targeted is African Americans. For years, poor neighborhoods have been targeted by police, whose main purpose was to find drugs by any means

With criminality already tied closely to race, the War on Drugs legislation expanded the definition of crime to drug usages. As demonstrated in The New Jim Crow, a 1995 survey found that 95% of participants pictured an African American person when asked to picture a drug user, but in reality, only 15% of the drug users were African Americans. This survey showed us the extent to which media’s overrepresentation of black

In waging the “war on drugs” between 1986 and 1992, police intensified their patrol of low income areas in Ontario targeting Black people as suspects. This directly resulted in the overrepresentation of Blacks in prison as reported by The Ontario Systemic Racism Commission even though there was no evidence to suggest Canadian Black populations were any more likely to use or profit from drugs than members of other races. The perceived success of profiling Blacks signaled by the high incarceration rates fueled the already existing stereotype that young Black males were likely to be involved in drug related crimes and in turn contributed to more overt racial profiling. Consequently, the profile became so loosely based that any Black male regardless of his age, or location was a potential threat. Toronto police went as far as initiating what legal scholar David Tanovich calls a no-walk list requiring African Canadian youth and other racialized groups to carry identification while walking the streets of

The purpose of this study is to expose the process of mass incarceration of poor black males, and females increasingly, within the context of a fabricated war on drugs which really is serving to keep the prison population booming by exploiting traditionally disadvantaged minorities in society. Alexander rightfully calls this a ?redesign? of the old racial caste system in America which was supposed to have been destroyed by the civil rights movement. The war on drugs in the 80s merely became the newest vehicle by which to exploit the black community in this country. The War on Drugs is really the rationale for racial control, which targets black men and women and relegates millions of citizens to what Alexander calls a ?second class status (Alexander, 2012).?

This paper aims will provide a concise history of drugs deriving from the erythroxylum coca plant and the sociological impact powder and crack cocaine legislation in the American justice system.

Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, explained how our treatment of criminals has created a new racial caste system, and the only way to make change is by massive social change and Civil Rights movement. The criminal laws often focus on psychoactive drugs used by the minority populations. Minorities are disproportionately targeted, arrested, and punished for drug offenses. For instance, Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian were portrayed as violent, traffickers of drugs and a danger to society. Surveillance was focused on communities of color, also immigrants, the unemployed, the undereducated, and the homeless, who continue to be the main targets of law enforcement efforts to fight the war on drugs. Although African Americans comprise only 12.2 percent of the population and 13 percent of drug users, they make up 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 59 percent of those convicted of drug offenses causing critics to call the war on drugs the “New Jim Crow”(drug policy). The drug

Tom Coleman, the officer that arrested these people, worked undercover for eighteen months, living as a poor, mischievous citizen as he “gained the trust” of prospective local drug dealers. During this time, he claimed to have purchased of an eight balls of cocaine from forty-six people throughout Tulia, in Cochran County. To give you a perspective, that is one third of the black men, arrested, at the time. During their trials, it was discovered that there was no hard

Oscar Danilo Blandon was another infamous crack dealer along with Ross and Meneses. “Blandon has also implied that his cocaine sales were, for a time, CIA-approved” (Webb n.p) Therefore, Blandon was also receiving help from officials from the United States in a way that was similar to Meneses. According to Gary Webb, Blandon testified, “And the people that was in charge, it was the CIA, so they didn't want to raise any drug money because they had the money that they wanted” (Webb n.p). The CIA was using the cocaine dealers for their own benefits in order to save up money for their own uses. Furthermore, the CIA did not really care about the long-lasting effect that crack would have on American

During the early 1990’s Colombia being one of the biggest exporters of narcotics in history, led by Pablo Escobar, who had a wide range of organized crime affiliations throughout Latin America. Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug lord and he smuggled narcotics all the way to South Florida as when authorities tried to capture him. One of Pablo Escobar’s most important alliances was that of the Mexican-based traffickers. Escobar knew that this was an important trade route because of its geography and how it would be easier to smuggle the narcotics into the United States. This allowed a smuggling partnership between both countries and Mexico was to eventually lead their own drug based trafficking system with the help of Pablo Escobar. From the distributed drugs, cartels would take a certain amount of profit, and would use that money to bribe Mexican officials. By bribing Mexican officials it was insured that if smugglers were to be arrested they would either be let go, the case would be dropped or taking action against a rival smuggling group by giving away information about the rival’s plan to carry

After getting the public support for his campaign, America saw an unprecedented rise in its incarceration rate, particularly among African Americans. The “ War on Drugs ” has had a disparate impact on the black community even though blacks and whites use drugs at approximately the same levels. This is achieved through a myriad of formal and informal practices. African-Americans are targeted and prosecuted at a much higher rate even though they are not statistically any likelier to abuse or sell drugs than the white population.

Since the inception of mandatory minimum cocaine laws in 1986 to the advent of the Armstrong case, not a single white offender had been convicted of a crack cocaine offense in federal courts serving Los Angeles and its six surrounding counties. Rather, virtually all white offenders were prosecuted in state court, where they were not subject to that drug’s lengthy mandatory minimum sentences. The impact of the decision to prosecute the black defendants in federal court was significant. In federal court they faced a mandatory minimum sentence of at least 10 years and a maximum of life without parole if convicted of selling more than 50 grams of crack. By contrast, if prosecuted in California state court, the defendants would have received a minimum sentence of three years and a maximum of five years (United States v. Armstrong, 1996).

Cocaine is an addictive drug that comes from the coca plant. How cocaine is made and ingested are the primary differences between powdered and crack cocaine. It can be ingested in multiple ways, but inhaling and smoking are the most common. Powdered cocaine is a white substance that is snorted and absorbed through the nasal tissue. Crack cocaine is made by dissolving cocaine with an alkaline (like baking soda), then it turns into a sheet that can be crushed out into “rock” form. In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Anyone caught with one gram of crack cocaine would receive the same sentence as another caught with 100 grams of powdered cocaine. Not too long after, Congress enacted a mandatory 5-year sentence for anyone caught with 50 grams of crack (500 grams of powdered) cocaine. Crack is punished this severely for many reasons, mainly being considered more dangerous, addictive, and its involvement with gangs and gun violence compared to powdered cocaine. My literature review will include how this disparity has affected people of color, the changes in the laws, and changes in the prison system.