Provine's Unequal Under Law

The War on Drugs has ravaged America for years, causing innumerable problems. In her chapter, “The Cruel Hand”, Michelle Alexander explores the consequences that the War on Drugs has had on African-Americans. Alexander utilizes emotional stories, facts, and United States policy to support her argument that the War on Drugs has been an adverse experience for America. Though her arguments are strong, Alexander may have benefited from the use of scientific evidence as Richard DeGrandpre utilized in his book, The Cult of Pharmacology. DeGrandpre includes data from drug studies conducted on animals, revealing misperceptions that can be placed upon drugs because of their name.

As the War on Drug continues to happen in the United States, racial disparities have become one of the major argument against it. The numbers in cost and the numbers in the amount of people put into jail because of this policy has been widespread and known to many more people. But it is not the only concerning thought that should come to mind, but “… whether incarceration has created the ‘New Jim Crow’” (Lopez). In the 1880s, the Jim Crow laws was created after the United States civil war. It was enacted by the lawmakers who was bitter by the fact that slavery ended. The purpose of the Jim Crow was to have more favors and benefits for the whites and suppressed the blacks. Ironically, although the Jim Crow laws had been

Alexander (2010) also claims in her argument that, “The drug war has been brutal-complete with SWAT teams, tanks, bazookas, grenade launchers, and sweeps of entire neighborhoods- but those who live in white communities have little clue to the devastation wrought” (Pg. 116). Even though the drug epidemic is an

This “war on drugs,” which all subsequent presidents have embraced, has created a behemoth of courts, jails, and prisons that have done little to decrease the use of drugs while doing much to create confusion and hardship in families of color and urban communities.1,2Since 1972, the number of people incarcerated has increased 5-fold without a comparable decrease in crime or drug use.1,3 In fact, the decreased costs of opiates and stimulants and the increased potency of cannabis might lead one to an opposing conclusion.4 Given the politics of the war on drugs, skyrocketing incarceration rates are deemed a sign of success, not failure. I don’t totally agree with the book (I think linking crime and black struggle is even older than she does, for instance) but I think The New Jim Crow pursues the right line of questioning. “The prison boom is not the main cause of inequality between blacks and whites in America, but it did foreclose upward mobility

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

Tonia Winchester, a prosecutor in the state of Washington, realized that the people whom she was prosecuting for marijuana offenses were young minorities, and that a conviction for marijuana carried a mandatory sentence that could ruin a young adults life, while a conviction for domestic violence did not (Hari 2015: 277-278). This policy was reminiscent of Anslinger’s policy that destroyed the career of Billie Holiday, and today’s laws spurring from the War on Drugs are still being unfairly applied to target minorities, even though it has become common knowledge that whites and blacks use drugs equally. By legalizing drugs, countries like Uruguay, who has legalized marijuana, have been able to target those criminals who directly benefit from the drug trade instead of punishing those users who are suffering from their addiction or other aliments (Hari 2015: 273). Hari

President Nixon first declared the “war on drugs” on June of 1971. This came after heavy drug use during the 1960s. New York in particular, had a rise in heroin use. After Nixon’s declaration, states began decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana and other drugs. Many small drug offences led to a mandatory fifteen years to life. This Drug War has led to an increase of incarceration rates since. One of the earliest laws that followed Nixon’s announcement were the Rockefeller Drug Laws that to not only failed to deter crime but also lead to other problems in the criminal justice system. With the Rockefeller Drug Laws came heavy racial disparity of those incarcerated for drug related crimes. Although the Obama Administration has begun reforms, the new President Elect Trump’s views may bring all the efforts back down.

In From Slavery to Prisons, Deborah Burris-Kitchen and Paul Burris claim that “Nixon‘s War on Drugs was an all--out attempt to completely destroy and incarcerate the entire Black race. Nixon linked crime and drugs to the corrosive nature of rebellion in urban centers” (12). The policies involved in the war directly target poor and urban communities, so police focused on these areas expecting and waiting for drug deals or suspicious activity. This expectation of criminal activity from black communities is pure criminalization and the flood of African Americans into the prison system sparked even more problems. In 13th, historians discuss how police sweeped through urban areas with high poverty rates and arrested men because police assumed they had drugs before they even had evidence. With many men of households in prison for dealing or possession, families had to fend for themselves which sparked in a large amount of crime in black youth, perpetrating the problems the war on drug claimed to be against showing that the advertised intentions of the war on drugs are not the true intentions. The war on drugs was declared by President Nixon, but the harsh policies and attitudes were perpetrated by Reagan, both manipulated the war on drugs to be a war on black

These people believe the war on drugs should not be viewed as a war against a particular collection of inanimate objects, but a convenient, yet inaccurate, representation. To ones that oppose the War on Drugs being all about race, they believe it should be understood as a special case of what war has always been-the engagement of force and violence against certain communities, and/or their institutions, in order to attain certain political objectives. Race has played an important role over the years in identifying the communities that became the targets of the drug war, consequently exposing their cultural practices and institutions to military-style attack and police control. Although the drug war has certainly sought to eradicate controlled substances and destroy the systems recognized for their circulation, this is only part of the story. Ones with this state of mind believe that state efforts to control drugs are also a way for dominant groups to express racial power. Overall, the significance of the drug trade and the oppression of African people and other people of color, they believe one must recognize the central role that drug trafficking has played and the maintenance of white supremacy worldwide. Addictive and harmful substances have historically been used to undermine societies and further white

While taking part in naming America the world’s largest jailer, for over 40 years, the War on Drugs has succeeded in imprisoning more than 45 million people. Although one might think that the law enforcement has cleared the streets from drugs, unfortunately, drugs are still more available than ever. Historically, certain drugs that are illegal today were commonly used in America. In the 1800s, drug addiction was looked at as a public health issue, whereas today it’s treated like a violent crime (The House I Live In). Eugene Jarecki, author and director of “The House I Live In”, argues that the War on Drugs is not only ineffective, but instead of treating drug addiction, it has increased drug abuse. This eventually, triggered the government to create a law enforcement that feeds mainly on America’s minorities. Author Christina Fauchon’s article, “Counterpoint: The Case Against Profiling” (2004), asserts “racial profiling in any environment […] is an unproductive and immoral policy to ensure safety.” Cynthia Godsoe, author of “The Ban on Welfare for Felony Drug Offenders: Giving a New Meaning to ‘Life Sentence’”(1998), discusses the Welfare Act that “denies both welfare and federally-funded food stamp to any individual convicted of” a drug related crime. Finally, Thomas R. Geers, writer of the article “Legalize Drugs and Stop the War on People” (1995), argues that legalizing drugs will reduce the number of addicts in the U.S. Although all of these articles

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.

Not only has does the war on drugs targeted minorities and proved unsuccessful, once our peaceful people are in jail, the law continues to abuse us. Whatever the debates around the world and the stigma of drug use, we should not let an individual's drug use obscure the fact that forcing the mass incarceration of consenting activities of hundreds of millions of people destroy their right to human rights, including the right to health, privacy, and liberation of notion and practice, and the right of the pursuit of happiness only because others feel those people do not deserve it. The centrality of criminalising users means that in reality a war on drugs is to a significant degree, a war on drug users; a war on

The problem I want to explore is how the War on Drugs has become a social problem. This is a social problem because it has created an overpopulated prison system disproportionately filled with people of color and the poor. The current rate of illegal drug use among African Americans and Whites is almost the same while a little less among Latinos (7.4 percent, 7.2 percent, and 6.4 percent, respectively) (Moore, L. D., and Elkavich, A., 2008). But because white people make up a larger portion of the U.S. population, the number of white drug users is much greater than that of drug users of color. Data from 1998 tells us that Whites made up 72 percent of all illegal drug users while African Americans made up 15 percent of illegal drug users (Moore

The War on Drugs in the United States has a profound influence on both the incarceration rates and activities of the criminal justice system. Many politicians and advocates of the policy claim that the War on Drugs is a necessary element to deter criminal behavior and reduce the crime rate. However, studies show that drug deterrent policies on possession and use have been inadequate and unsuccessful (Cole & Gertz, 2013). Studies also show that the War on Drugs has not attained its objectives because the policy exhibits racial discrepancy as it has led to the disproportionate incarceration of Blacks and minorities. Specifically, evidence indicates that the upper class, generally White individuals, is more likely to use powered cocaine while