Mad as hell about “drug war”

 

One of my pet beefs is the “war on drugs.”  It is in reality a war on the poor, especially minorities, and moreover, it was designed that way at the very start.  Proof that it was so designed is readily available, as I have previously suggested sources for the interested reader to consult.  Such as the fact that even with mounting evidence of such obvious bias, public officials, with rare exceptions, do nothing to change this situation.  It=s as if they simply don=t care.  After all, it is just the poor and especially African-Americans, who are imprisoned, and they are superfluous as far as corporate profits and careers of politicians are concerned.  And growing numbers of women are also becoming superfluous as well, since there numbers within the prison system for mostly drug offenses are rising faster than those for men.

The latest evidence comes from a report from Human Rights Watch, released on June 8.  In its press release, the report, aptly titled APunishment and Prejudice,@ noted that the rate of incarceration for African-American men for drug offenses is 482 per 100,000, compared to only 36 per 100,000 for white men.  Put somewhat differently, that=s one out of every 207 African-American men, versus one out of every 2778 white men!  The report also notes that nationally, 62 percent of all imprisoned drug offenders are African-American males.  In some states these percentages go as high as 80 or 90!  This is despite the well-publicized fact that there are few racial differences as far as illegal drug use is concerned.

This comes as no surprise for those of us who have been keeping track of such statistics during the past 20 years or so.  I am not alone among criminologists and others who have been reporting these figures.  Indeed, very reputable criminologists, including Michael Tonry, William Chambliss, Marc Mauer, James Austin, John Irwin and Elliott Currie, plus well-known social critics Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, have been saying this all along.  These are not careless, shoot-from-the-hip researchers.  A cursory check of their credentials and their publications provides sufficient proof.  Such well-respected research organizations like the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project, the National Criminal Justice Commission, among others have been documenting the racial biases of the drug war.  Such respectable newspapers as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and even conservative commentary William F. Buckley have come out strong against the drug war.  In fact, even one of the most conservative newspapers I know of, our own local Las Vegas Review-Journal, has railed against the drug war!  I have hardly been a voice Acrying in the wilderness.@  And yet nobody in power seems to be listening.

And I know that millions of ordinary citizens feel the same way.  A few have written letters to City Life saying so (thanks especially to Nicole Bozek for a beautiful letter).   Those with loved-ones in prison know the truth about this war.  I have personally heard from many of them, some from other states, including Massachusetts.  I am currently providing expert testimony for a case pending in Vancouver, British Columbia.  This involves a rather ordinary middle-class woman from Southern California who was busted by the DEA warriors for allegedly assisting someone with their home-grown marijuana, which they were using for medicinal purposes - ironically, made legal by a vote of California voters, but subsequently ignored by the federal government.  She is seeking asylum in Canada to avoid a long prison sentence (do you blame her?).  There are millions of other similar stories of people locked up for possessing or even Atrafficking@ in small amounts of Aillegal@ drugs.

As usual, it is the Alittle people,@ those without any power, who are most damaged by such insanity.  As usual, the beneficiaries are politicians getting elected and re-elected for their Atough on crime@ stance - a very phony and hypocritical stance at that!  Not to mention those whose careers within the Acrime control industry@ have benefited.  The prison industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world.  As I have reported earlier in City Life, thousands of companies, including huge Fortune 500 corporations, are finding huge profits as they Acash in on crime.@  In this case, they cash in on the drug war.

Meanwhile, the real Adrug pushers,@ our friendly pharmaceutical companies, tobacco companies and producers of liquor, laugh all the way to the bank.  To add insult to injury, those drugs that can really make life better - some of which are literally life-saving - cost so much that the elderly can barely afford them, thanks largely to Amanaged care@ (more appropriately called Amangled care@!).  Why don=t we call these pushers Adrug traffickers@?  Do I really need to answer that?

What can we do about this?  How do we end this war?  Do we have to Atake to the streets@ like we did to end the Vietnam War?  After all, it is our money that is being spent on this war!  Meanwhile, vital human services are being cut back - like education, child care, libraries, etc.  Indeed, in every state we seen expenditures for human services going downward, while expenditures for Acrime control industry@ continue to rise.   What we need is a mass movement like the anti-war movement in the 1960s. For those interested in doing something, get on the Internet and find out more about organizations that are already in the forefront of such a movement - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Justice Policy Institute, the Sentencing Project - among others.  Let=s do something, because, frankly, I=m tired of talking about this!