The Skin Color Of Drugs

The war on drugs also corresponded with welfare reforms which meant impoverished people had to find ways to make money which usually involved selling drugs. Both reforms effect poor communities in negative ways it especially effected poor black men who were trying to provide for their families. There are 2.2 million black men in jail or prison and they make up thirty-seven percent of the incarcerated population even though black people only account for 12.3% of the population of the United States. One in nine black men will end up going to prison at some point in their live compared to one in every hundred-six white men. Sixty percent of black men who did not finish high school and thirty percent of black men who don’t go college end up getting incarcerated.

The facts speak for themselves, people of color are the enemies and targets in the war on drugs. They also tell us that fighting back is useless due to the racial bias that is inherent in the criminal justice system. This might come as a surprise to the majority that believe discrimination is no longer in existence, considering that it is a black man living in the White House. Ever since Barack Obama pledged to serve as the forty-fourth president

The United States have imprisoned many people in the country than any other due to drug wars. In the year 2014 more than 1.5 million people were arrested for drugs. Drug offenses by itself caused these

When compared to the overall population of America, African Americans only make up 12% of the national population, but they make up a majority of the prison population. Much of this is because of the War on Drugs that was declared in the 1980s. The declaration of the War on Drugs in the 1980s led to the mass incarceration of African Americans and Latinos, tripling the number of drug arrests in the 1980s from 581,000 to 1,633,000 in 2009 (Mauer,

The criminal justice system and the prison system serves as a control. Policies, laws and legislature is put in place to work against African Americans. It works as a guarantee that they will be admitted into the criminal system which will castigate them and hold them captive for the rest of their lives, preventing them from becoming upwardly mobile. It is hard to believe that “about 90 percent of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense in Illinois are African American. (Alexander, 2010). Yet the crime rate in Chicago cannot be contained. Many are still dying by guns which has become an epidemic, a public health issue, and ma and many remain as they were then abusing drugs or involved in the trafficking of. Money that should be spent on treating addiction and counselling is directed towards the war.

The United States used War on Drugs as the reason to have mass incarceration and arrest people of color, especially the black people. The government arrest the black people into jail by accuse them selling or consuming crack cocaine, however, it is the government (CIA) who allowed guerrilla armies to bring the crack cocaine to the black neighborhood. The War on Drugs is just one of the excuse that government used to put black Americans into jail and this mass incarceration is their tool for social control. This way, they can separate the white people and people of color and maintain their racial hierarchy.

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

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, drug use became a major concern for most Americans. As the War on Drugs and “Just Say No” campaign were being thrust into the spotlight by the government and media, the public became more aware of the scope of drug use and abuse in this country. The federal and states’ governments quickly responded by creating and implementing more harsh and punitive punishments for drug offenses. Most of these laws have either remained unchanged or become stricter in the years since then.

The sentencing disparity for drug use by race is disproportionate for African Americans because of The War on Drugs. “In 1951, Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, collaborated with senate of criminal investigations to target black “dope peddlers” who were luring pretty white blondes into drug addiction. Anslinger was quoted saying, “ For the peddler who is willing to wreck young lives… no punishment is too severe.” (Lassiter 2015) Using this rhetoric, presidents like Nixon and Reagan would shape the way drug law are enforced.

The war on drugs has been viewed as a discriminatory process because it has led to the captivity of more Africans Americans than slavery. American prisons house more African Americans due to discriminatory mandatory sentencing and misguided drug laws since the drug war began in the 1970s (page

Unfortunately for people of a non-white heritage, new legislation will probably never even make it to the floors of congress against prescription drugs because it is an assumption that they aren't being abused as often as marijuana or cocaine. Because a crime is not as visible and occur in the home of the offender, drug policies are unconsciously racist against those of who are devoid of economic wealth. Often it is those who are devoid of wealth and education also happen to be colored. Prison does not seek to remedy the differences between colored and non-colored, but to incarcerate and remove that person from society to avoid the possible conflicts that might arise. It is an unfortunate cycle that has yet to be broken, and the abundance of scientific support against drugs like cocaine only further supports legal discrimination of different races. In the eyes of the law, everyone is equally responsible for the type of drug they are caught with, but it is fact that it is just a façade facilitated by the people with power. In the early 1900's, Mexicans immigrating into the United States often possessed and used marijuana. There was absolutely no legislation at the time against marijuana and the effects of marijuana weren't completely understood, yet it was made illegal to possess. The fear of white Americans losing their jobs was a major contributing factor and

“We have defeated Jim Crow, but now we have to deal with his son, James Crow Jr., esquire.” (Whitaker) Those words by the reverend Al Sharpton summarize the feelings of many people about the modern face of racism in America. Unlike the Jim Crow laws of the 1890’s which created culture of overt discrimination enforced through fear. Modern day racism does not use blunt force, the fear of the lynch mob, or even outright separate but equal laws. It is more covert and sophisticated using the current laws and justice system to entrap many African Americans in the prison system.

Throughout history, the drug war has always targeted minority groups. “At the root of the drug-prohibition movement in the United States is race, which is the driving force behind the first laws criminalizing drug use, which first appeared as early as the 1870s (Cohen, 56)”. There were many drug laws that targeted minority groups such as the marijuana ban of 1930s that criminalized Mexican migrant farm workers and in the Jim Crow South, reformist wanted to wage war on the Negro cocaine feign so they used African Americans as a scapegoat while they overlooked southern white women who were a bigger problem for the drug epidemic (Cohen, 57). Instead of tackling the root of the drug problem they passed the blame to struggling minority groups within the United States.

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 early 1960’s there have been an alarming increase in drug use in the United States in 1962, four million Americans had tried an illegal drug. By 1999, that number had risen to a staggering 88.7 million, according to the 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.