Critics of the war on drugs suggest that racial disparity in drug arrests is more likely to reflect racially biased policing than racial differences in the use or distribution of drugs. Do you find this argument to be persuasive or convincing? How can we make sense of the competing results of the two studies on this issue that are discussed in the required reading and in this module?

ANSWER

The War on Drugs and Racial Disparity

Evidence shows that the war on drugs has had profound unequal outcomes across racial groups. This manifests through racial discrimination by the law enforcers and disproportionate drug war misery suffered by mostly the communities of color and minority groups. Many different communities of color within the country bear the impact of discriminatory enforcement of drug laws. Many persons arrested due to allegations of drug trading are persons from the Black community compared to their white counterparts, which is clear evidence of the disparity in investigations and prosecution of the drug suscepts.

Many Black community persons are more targeted in drug war enforcement, which is a clear discriminatory move. The hugest racial disparities are seen among Black and Latinx people, who are the most targets by the law enforcers (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018). There are higher arrests and incarceration rates for these communities, which is not a reflection of the increased prevalence of drug use. The law enforcers tend to only focus on urban areas, lower-income communities, and communities of color. The disparities in arrests and incarceration are seen in violations of drug possession laws and low-level sales (Earp, Lewis, & Hart, 2021). Persons selling small amounts of drugs are likely to be arrested and spend decades in jail, while the more giant cartels remain untouchable. This unequal enforcement ignores many factors, such as drug dependency and the universal appeal of the drug themselves. The criminalization of people of color in the name of fighting drugs, particularly the young Black people, is a profound system of racial control, reflecting the Jim Crow laws in the country until the mid-1960s.

The racial disparity in the war on drugs is also witnessed in the sentencing outcomes, where young black men are more likely to be convicted for longer sentences than their white counterparts. It is argued that the policy decisions can explain the racial disparities in drug sanctioning in place, which are made to increase the number of arrests for street-level drug offenders dramatically (Rosino & Hughey, 2018). The African American drug offending also has a more public nature, where the community is also culturally stereotyped and linked to the majority of drug crimes in the country. Most fundamentally, according to Santoro & Santoro ( 2018), the racial disparities in the fight on drugs were the product of the war on drugs focus, which was the architect’s decision to approach the change by enforcing the battle against the street-level drug to restore a sense of order. This led to an increased number of arrests of drug users on the streets who were primarily Black American young men.

Political expediency and racialized politics is also another factor contributing to the racial disparities in the fight. More politicians want to be seen working by enacting policies that target drug users, mainly from minority communities (Rosino & Hughey, 2018). As a result, one particular community is more targeted. A young Black man dealing small-scale drugs in the streets of a vast city is likely to be arrested and reincarcerated compared to his white counterpart dealing with higher amounts of drugs sale in the same town.

From the results of the studies, it is manifest that this is an issue that ought to be thoroughly addressed to ensure equality and justice in the war against drugs. There is a need for enacting policies that will end the profiling and stigmatizing of persons from any community and ensure that justice is equally served to all perpetrators of the drug trade and that the fight focuses mainly on the drug cartels remain untouchable (Mitchell & Caudy, 2017). The criminal justice system should also be structured to ensure that there is no future “unjustly punishments “ for the minority African American communities in the name of fighting against drugs.

References

Earp, B. D., Lewis, J., & Hart, C. L. (2021). Racial justice requires ending the war on drugs. The American Journal of Bioethics. 21(4), 4-19.

Mitchell, O., & Caudy, M. S. (2017). Race differences in drug offending and drug distribution arrests. Crime & Delinquency, 63(2), 91-112.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). Racial bias and disparities in proactive policing. Proactive policing: Effects on crime and communities, 251-301.

Rosino, M. L., & Hughey, M. W. (2018). The war on drugs, racial meanings, and structural racism: A holistic and reproductive approach. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 77(3-4), 849-892.

Santoro, T. N., & Santoro, J. D. (2018). Racial bias in the US opioid epidemic: a review of the history of systemic bias and implications for care. Cureus, 10(12).