cannabisnews.com: America's 'War on Drugs' Looks Unfairly Warped 





America's 'War on Drugs' Looks Unfairly Warped 
Posted by FoM on August 21, 2001 at 22:37:37 PT
By Neal Peirce, The Washington Post 
Source: International Herald Tribune
The United States, rarely shy about condemning other nations for human rights abuses, will get a dose of its own medicine when the World Conference Against Racism opens in Durban, South Africa, on Aug. 31. The target will be America's "war on drugs," in which black men are being imprisoned for drug offenses at 13 times the rate of white men.A team of American lawyers, clergy and drug experts, organized as the Campaign to End Race Discrimination in the War on Drugs, will assert that America's criminal justice system has been turned into an "apartheid-like" device.
"We don't want to see the United States continue to get off the hook on this," says Deborah Small of the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, one of the American delegates. "There has been a lot more attention about racial profiling and to the death penalty internationally than to the drug war. But there is no other public policy in the U.S. that affects so many people detrimentally."The campaign last week released a letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan calling on leaders in Africa and the international community at large to speak out against the United States for allegedly racist pursuit of its drug war. What are we to make of this attempt to make an international cause célèbre of U.S. drug and incarceration policies? I would like to say it is based on exaggeration, oversimplification and half-truths. But I can't.The motivation behind America's drug wars, its mandatory minimum sentences, its willingness to let the incarceration rate balloon to the highest in the world, was not race but "law and order" politics. Yet the impact of the policies has become profoundly racist. People know it. They just do precious little to correct it.According to the Washington-based Sentencing Project, African-Americans are 13 percent of drug users but represent 35 percent of arrests for drug possession, 55 percent of convictions and 74 percent of prison sentences.And there is little mystery why. First, there is location. Poor black city neighborhoods, not calm white suburbs, are the scene of big street sweeps.And then there is class. Jenni Gainsborough of the Sentencing Project notes: "If you're white middle-class and your kid is on drugs, you call the treatment center. In the inner city there's no treatment. Your first port of call is the criminal justice system - and it escalates. Once you have a record, every interaction leads to a stronger sanction."States fed these fires with their tough laws of recent years, and the federal government, if anything, is worse. Under a 1986 federal law it takes only one-hundredth the amount of crack cocaine (generally more popular in black neighborhoods) to trigger the same mandatory minimum sentence as powder cocaine (more popular among affluent whites).In many city neighborhoods, more than half of young black men spend time in prison. Even those inclined to form permanent relationships can't do so from behind bars. For ex-felons, jobs are rare. Official policy, says James Compton, president of the Chicago Urban League, is leading to "incapacitation of future generations ... hopelessness and despair in the black community.""Drug prohibition has become a replacement system for segregation," says Ira Glazer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It has become a system of separating out, subjugating, imprisoning ... substantial portions of a population based on skin color."Few of the legislators who wrote today's laws anticipated such outcomes. But the results give strong credence to the charges of racist policy being leveled against the country. Source: International Herald-Tribune (France)Author: Neal Peirce, The Washington Post Published: Wednesday, August 22, 2001  Copyright: 2001 The International Herald Tribune Contact: letters iht.comWebsite: http://www.iht.com/Related Articles & Web Sites:ACLU: http://www.aclu.orgFAMM: http://www.famm.org/TLC - DPF: http://www.lindesmith.org/Census: War on Drugs Hit Blacks http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10168.shtmlPolice Developing Profiling Policies http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10167.shtml
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Comment #6 posted by kaptinemo on August 22, 2001 at 13:48:56 PT:
Anti shrieking: "Racists? We're not racists!"
From the linked article:"Negro cocaine Fiends are a New southern Menace!" screamed Dr. Edward H. Williams in The New York Times, Feb. 8, 1914, while Harrison was in committee. Old Doc Williams didn't let the facts stand in his way: "But I believe the record of the 'cocaine nigger' near Asheville, who dropped five men dead in their tracks, using only one cartridge for each, offers evidence that is sufficiently convincing."Yes, that was a long time ago. People are more 'enlightened since then...right?"For those who think that the rationale of American drug law isn't inherently racist and anti-tribal, or that it's different than the industrial fascism of alcohol Prohibition, we have the KKK-supported Rep. Richmond P. Hobson of Alabama. In the 1920's Hobson was the most famous anti-heroin crusader in the country. In 1911 Hobson was the man who introduced what became the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition, in Congress. One of Charlie Rangel's favorite lies is that Drug Prohibition and Alcohol Prohibition are separate issues engineered by separate forces. They were, in fact, part and parcel of the same political program engineered by exactly the same individuals, most of them anti-Black racists."I can just hear them: You said it yourself! That was a long time ago!Okay, let's take a more contemporary look, shall we?In the yellow press the single most common synonym for "nigger" was "drug dealer" or "addict," as in the sharp-shooter from Asheville; these words are racist code to this day. Anyone who thinks that racism isn't a major factor in contemporary American politics should try living in the hick White sticks for a while; it's enough to make you puke. If the Drug War were doing to the White community what it's doing to the Black, it would have ended years ago. William Moffitt of The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, agreeing with the defendants in a case before the Supreme Court that the statistical evidence proves racially biased enforcement, was rebutted on the Today show, 2/26/96, by Attorney General Janet Reno. Reno, also determined to out-Republican the Republicans, insisted that "crack is a tremendously violence-inciting drug," and that therefore the Republican hicks have it right. How is that a defense against selective enforcement? Niggers are violent?...In December of 1990 Judge Pamela Alexander in Minnesota's Hennepin County Court threw out the crack possession convictions of five Black defendants as racist. Minnesota's Office of Drug Policy had officially concluded that there was no pharmacological difference between crack and powder, and therefore, concluded Judge Alexander, the Draconian sentence for crack was culturally, or economically, prejudicialNow, you tell me, antis - if you have the guts to - why you believe that the drug laws of this country were not inherently racist from the git-go? When every scrap of historical data points to exactly the same conclusion?
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Comment #5 posted by MDG on August 22, 2001 at 11:25:03 PT
How true this statement is...
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.Ayn Rand
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Comment #4 posted by Patrick on August 22, 2001 at 09:11:42 PT
Attention World Conference Against Racism 
Following is an excerpt from the link provided by kaptinemo:"As of early 1994, 1500 Black Americans per 100,000 were behind bars. The figure for Whites was 210 per 100,000. As of 1997, the U.S. had an incredible 645 people per 100,000 behind bars, while rates in countries such as Canada, France, Germany, Finland, Sweden and Australia varied from 40 to 125 per 100,000. Our imprisonment rate is comparable only to the world's worst police states. 60% of all federal, and 25% of all state prisoners are there on drug charges.
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Comment #3 posted by The GCW on August 22, 2001 at 06:51:41 PT
vicious circle game.
 http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1468/a06.html?3170. ALL LOCKED UP, NOWHERE TO GO.   Example: * Minnesota's ranking among U.S. incarceration rates: Fifty-one ( includes District of Columbia ). * Minnesota's ranking among U.S. education-spending per capita: First. * District of Columbia's ranking among U.S. incarceration rates: First. * District of Columbia's ranking among U.S. education-spending per capita: Fifty-one.There is some coralation to the mentality of how money is even spent to begin with. DC is maybe more than 60% Black and the way they spend money is to fill the dog bowl of the gravy train of prohibitionist politicieans instead of education, which is what helps the future citizens. That stat above indicates the black kids have been sold. Racist? Do you think we're racist to Jamaica, a country of Black Christians?
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Comment #2 posted by kaptinemo on August 22, 2001 at 05:42:58 PT:
Another journalist who hasn't done his 
homework. The Drugwar is all about racism. This link makes it abundantly clear that this is the true origin of the entire endeavor:Black Fiendshttp://www.drugwar.com/blackfiends.htmBut because the practitioners of it simply can't be shamelessly open about their prejudices anymore - not being 'sensitive, don't you know - they utilize 'code' to hide their meanings amongst mixed company. But the savage result is always the same.If I can find his email addie, he's getting this post-haste.
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Comment #1 posted by Gary50 on August 22, 2001 at 02:50:51 PT
O'Rielly and the gang
"In many city neighborhoods, more than half of young black men spend time in prison. Even those inclined to form permanent relationships can't do so from behind bars. For ex-felons, jobs are rare."------This should explain to Bill O'Rielly, and the conservatives on cable news why "black men" just have babies, and don't stay around to raise them. They think it's just an inexplicable cultural phenomenon.
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