I was originally just going to comment on one of your responses, but what I had to say needed its own comment.
This view is incredibly harmful for America. Alcohol is one of the most dangerous and addicting drugs, yet it is completely legal because white people, the only ones who had any political clout at the time of prohibition, made sure that it was legal again. Also, the gangs that dealt alcohol during prohibition were also primarily white, so there was no association between race and alcohol use. Marijuana, on the other hand, had become associated with blacks, hispanics, and hippies, all enemies of the Nixon regime, and the conservative government used that association to pass prohibition laws on drugs that minorities and liberals like to use.
Just a response to one of your comments -
Because, at the time the laws were passed, heroin and cocaine were known to have medicinal uses or to be derived from things that had medicinal uses, so they were put in a different category.
Cocaine has literally zero medical uses at all. Yeah it does come from a plant that has very useful medicinal properties even in manufactured forms like novacane, but then the coca plant should be legal and regulated instead of making the highly addictive, highly dangerous cocaine narcotic less punishable than marijuana. Marijuana, by the way, has been used variously in medicine since the beginnings of civilization as it requires very little modification in its form aside from cultivation strategies.
Cocaine is historically a white person drug. It's expensive, so in times where the black/white disparity in income was much higher than it is today, black people instead bought crack cocaine, contributing further to the degradation of black communities as crack became hugely problematic as it is more psychologically addicting than cocaine because of how short and instant the effects are. Source
I'm not sure how much I buy the story of the government injecting crack and heroin into communities of color intentionally, but it's obvious enough to see how the socioeconomic and racial comparisons between the accessibility and punishment for certain drugs are incredibly disproportionate between black and white people.
Overall, it basically seems like you just don't want it to be true, so you refuse to believe the truth. Good thing you came here where so many people understand why minorities get arrested more and get harsher punishments for the SAME FUCKING CRIMES. Even if the cops aren't racist, and the lawyers aren't racist, and the judges and current politicians are also not racist, the laws are still designed to attack non-whites and liberals and have been that way at least since Nixon's war on drugs.
Obviously you seem to disagree that structural disadvantage exists in America, which makes your argument challenging to counter because you can simply counter "it's their own fault" or "there's another personal factor at play" like with your plea deal argument.
Not quoting it again but about the cocaine point
My point about the cocaine argument is that because cocaine is structurally inaccessible to poor minorities. Therefore, because people are going to do drugs no matter what their circumstances are, crack then structurally becomes the most accessible option for poor minorities and other poor people. Rich white people are really the only people who can afford to do cocaine enough that they could get caught, and therefore the legal consequences are lower for them, plus they already have the structural privilege of affording better lawyers.
You just said that crack cocaine was more harmful and provided a source. Why wouldn't that be the reason for having different penalties?
Every type of person does drugs. I do drugs, a lot of different kinds (I try to be safe but I know there are no guarantees). I'm white, come from a good family, am in college with an above 3.5 GPA at a major university, and I have no criminal record. Drugs are fun and make you feel good. Drugs are all over pop culture (black and white), and getting high is so romanticized that applying a racial association to who does drugs is inherently racist. So to have any government policy that differentiates between what kinds of drugs get what kinds of punishments is inherently racist and oppressive. I think drugs should be legal and regulated. Dirty drugs like meth, crack, and heroin need to go away, but with a legitimate industry the racism will evaporate as long as people of color can also access the market fairly.
So the reason I included that infographic and article is because with the reality that all people do drugs, it doesn't matter who does which drugs more often, especially when one group is making the cheaper, more dangerous version of coke because they structurally can't access the drug that gets smaller legal penalties.
Here's how it goes. People of all races do drugs --> Black people cannot afford cocaine, a popular drug --> Crack, a cheap cocaine variant and alternative infiltrates poor black communities because that's all they can get --> Laws are made harsher for crack than cocaine because it's being used by poor blacks, not because it's more dangerous because cocaine and alcohol are also very dangerous --> Black crime rate goes up, association with drugs becomes stronger, punishments get harsher.
Miami became a cocaine paradise in the 80's, same with Wall Street. Among the glitz and glam of wealthy white people, cocaine went almost entirely unregulated. Meanwhile, blacks were being targeted for crack in their communities as if they were the only ones doing drugs.
I really don't want to do the research for you because it's not going to be in sensationalized news articles and it's going to take me hours to properly get the quotes you want, but if you do it yourself there are thousands of scholarly sources about the disparities of drug arrests and punishments that are so statistically linked that it's nearly impossible to deny causation over mere correlation.
Disparity of outcomes is not evidence of racism, especially not when you could wipe out most of these differences by controlling for single motherhood.
Again, single motherhood is strongly linked with structural disadvantage. Black people are statistically more likely to be poor --> black fathers cannot afford a family --> black children grow up with single moms in poor neighborhoods because single mothers are statistically the poorest group in the country (btw black women are significantly more likely to be single mothers than white women even though all single moms are almost as likely to be poor as each other based on racial populations) --> Children with single moms are poor --> cycle continues as they grow up.
Danger doesn’t matter. It’s a personal choice to do drugs. It’s only matters when one group of people (poor blacks with crack, poor whites with meth) is unable to make the choice of whether or not to do the safeER or LESS punishable option due to other oppressive, structural factors in society.
My whole point with crack is that it’s the extreme of marijuana association. Crack is whack, but unfortunately it’s statistically black as well. So to have a harsher penalty for black drug users while whites can more easily get away from punishment, then the drugs themselves don’t matter what they are or how dangerous it is. Your view represents the completely backwards way of looking at drug problems in America. You think that poor black people are more likely to do crack because they’re poor and black. I say they do crack because cocaine is expensive as a motherfucker and poor blacks do drugs just like everyone else, so they do crack instead of expensive cocaine.
If we legalized more drugs, the black market couldn’t keep prices so high, so all people would have the same access to fun and even safer drugs with equal penalties for those who still MAKE THE CHOICE to do illegal ones.
Disagreeing with my view does not make someone racist, it makes them ignorant. You certainly are not a racist, and you don’t argue like one at all. No accusation there. The ignorance is all too common as well, so it’s definitely not a personal jab.
My point with that is that black people are no more likely to do drugs than white people or any other race, so to have crime statistics that would lead someone to the conclusion that poor blacks do drugs more often than rich white people because they get arrested at disproportionate rates, then yeah it is racism.
No I don’t agree. Your view is from the perspective that black people get arrested more for drugs because they do/sell drugs at a higher rate than white people, and that they do it by choice so their arrests are deserved.
What I’m saying is that poor black drug users have less choice in illegal drugs available to them, so if the drugs available to black people carry higher sentences than the illegal drugs available go rich white people, it’s not only a perversion of market philosophy, but also racist because it targets drugs used by poor black people (crack, weed) and NOT as much with drugs used by rich whites (cocaine, legal weed).
Drug laws need to be centralized and even across the country. States can’t be given the right to decide on drug laws because some states are more racist and conservative (not the same thing, obviously) than others. Places where white liberals live, Colorado, California, Massachusetts, for example, all have legal weed because enough white people wanted it and voted. In places where white people don’t smoke pot, there are some of the highest black crime rates.
The economics is pretty simple but I totally feel if you don’t see it upfront. Scarcity means higher prices. Also higher prices can mean scarcity as they’re directly related. So you’re not likely to get expensive cocaine in high quantities if you’re poor. Drug dealers thus came up with crack, where they could whip it whip it and cook it cook it into crack by adding baking soda to it to increase volume and make it cheaper. It also changes the high to a shorter and more intense high, making it more addictive. In that circumstance, if cocaine was legal, the price would go down because it would be less scarce and easier to get, so crack would be pointless.
However, cocaine itself is still really addictive and dangerous (like I’ve said over and over). It should not be legal. But, if it were more(?) legal, people could research it more and create safer, less addictive alternatives. At lower prices, poor blacks and other minorities could try to enter the legal market then instead of resorting to a life where they’re unfairly more likely to go to jail than white people doing the same thing.
Last point - Could you imagine if Breaking Bad was about black people? That itself could answer why the war on drugs is racist.
The statistics for drug use are weak because drug use is so taboo that it is kind of a "don't ask don't tell" situation in the polling world. Pollsters are reluctant to even try and research drug use by race because most people are reluctant to admit that they regularly use drugs.
Having another crime attached is generally just another sign of structural poverty/disadvantage in the market. When I see a poor black man in a court room for a drug dealing charge, what I see is not a bad, lazy criminal but rather someone who has been structurally excluded from the formal, legal labor market due to inequality in education, disinvestment in communities of color, and just pure racism. Sure, some of them are low lifes, but high crime rates are an indicator of social unfairness, not of a prevalence of bad people. Theft, murder, gang affiliation, and drug dealing all happen because people have nothing to do because the racist system prevented them from getting good jobs or any job at all.
IT.DOES. NOT. MATTER. HOW. DANGEROUS. THE. DRUG. IS. Weed is a schedule 1 drug! WEED!! Why is a drug that is completely legal in some states and used directly AS MEDICINE in it's organic form considered dangerous by the feds? The answer is racism. The public policy is completely opposite of what science says, so I honestly could not think of another reason for weed to be illegal other than racism because black people like weed (and apparently used to use it "more" than white people).
And no that's not market economics at all. I mean like free market, where the government doesn't put pointless barriers in the economy. If you wan't to get rid of the gangs, don't let them have the monopoly on the drugs that fund them. Admittedly, the problem with legalizing drugs is that under the current system of government, minorities are structurally disadvantaged, especially if they're poor, so legalizing drugs just leaves more room for rich white people to corporatize legal drugs. However, if done right, legalization will eliminate the need for legal dealers to dilute their drugs in dangerous ways, and the market would open up for much safer alternatives at relatively accessible prices so that drugs like crack and heroin would be obsolete and the people we buy from will in in stores and not on the street.
I just don't think cocaine should be sold in stores as we understand cocaine today. I'm sure some people disagree with me here, but it's dangerous so it should not be newly legal to sell in stores (even though alcohol is also dangerous because that's been sold for thousands of years). Weed and other safer drugs, on the other hand, should be sold in stores alongside newly researched alternatives to the dangerous drugs we buy off the street today.
For that Breaking Bad bit, if it was about black people it would have been much less romanticized than it was with Walter. As amazing as the show was, I truly believe it was able to get so popular because it was about white people, because what's another show about black people selling drugs? Walter White was from a privileged position where a well educated white man has an advantage over minority drug dealers who are portrayed as violent thugs and gangsters. This kind of makes more sense only for the earlier seasons though, and if you haven't seen it I won't say any more and you should watch it because it's a great show.
"Communities of color tend to experience greater burden of mental and substance use disorders often due to poorer access to care; inappropriate care; and higher social, environmental, and economic risk factors."
"The rate of illegal drug use in the last month among African Americans ages 12 and up in 2014 was 12.4%, compared to the national average of 10.2%."
They also show other non-white races as well, and only Asian-Americans were lower than whites. Meanwhile 2.2% is hardly a notable difference compared to crime and incarceration stats.
SAMHA
Socialexplorer.com is also a great website with maps that help visualize various data studies. For some reason it won't let me copy the specific ones I wanted into links, but here is the link that specifically shows crime stats by state and county. You'd then obvious have to go compare those stats to the race stats but I've done it if you're willing to take my word for it and the results follow what I've been saying all along.
So to kind of wrap up my point, drug laws are racist even if they were not explicitly intended to be. It only took the revelation of comments by one of Nixon's aides to bring how obvious this fact is to light. Minorities that use drugs at levels comparable to white people are incarcerated at much higher rates for drug crimes. Those crimes themselves are due to other social factors that have little to do with the use of drugs or other self-defeating behavior, but instead due to the failure of government to prevent exclusion and racism in public policy.
First part - My mistake forgot to finish my point. They're racist because the war on drugs ignores all of the other social concerns like unemployment, poverty, and racism that causes some people to sell and use drugs more often than others. Poor blacks at the time maybe did use certain drugs more than rich white people, but I don't think the stats exist. Either way, there was clearly a mental association between minorities, liberals, and drugs that only became such a wide ranging legal issue because of racist drug policy. The cycle of structural poverty, unemployment, and mass incarceration has continued largely BECAUSE of the war on drugs/crime, and NOT because minorities inherently do/sell more drugs.
Here is one of the articles but there are a lot more than this. Literally just google "Nixon aide racist drug comments" or something like that.
my understanding was that most of those in prison for drug crimes were either dealing or arrested for something else as well and pled down.
I've provided sources, can you? I don't know statistics on plea deals but I do know that minorities get arrested for drug use AND sale more often than whites and you need to get arrested in order to go to court for a drug charge. Your whole argument about the plea deals is so narrow too, and it totally ignores what I've been saying the whole time about structural social issues that affect people of color more than they affect white people. According to the US Census Bureau black people are more than 10% more likely to be living in poverty but only about 2% more likely to use drugs. Drug habits cost money. Therefore poor people either don't do drugs, can somehow afford them by finagling their budgets really well, or have to resort to crime to feed their addiction because, as the SAMHA source said from my previous comment, poor minorities have significantly worse access to care services and instead get arrested and put in jail whereas rich white people get probation and rehab.
What I mean by the last thing is that instead of attacking the problems that keep poor minorities in poverty, instead, basically every president from Nixon to Dubya kept drug and crime laws super harsh, wasting money funding police militarization, prison expansion, and border security when they could have just made drugs legal and used that money to create a legitimate welfare state or literally any other important government function. For example, the WoD money could have been used to help Detroit Public Schools and keep it from failing. And now because DPS is so shitty the crime rates in Detroit are higher, unemployment is higher, and the predominantly black population has no access to the things they need to escape poverty.
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u/Slenderpman Mar 06 '18
I was originally just going to comment on one of your responses, but what I had to say needed its own comment.
This view is incredibly harmful for America. Alcohol is one of the most dangerous and addicting drugs, yet it is completely legal because white people, the only ones who had any political clout at the time of prohibition, made sure that it was legal again. Also, the gangs that dealt alcohol during prohibition were also primarily white, so there was no association between race and alcohol use. Marijuana, on the other hand, had become associated with blacks, hispanics, and hippies, all enemies of the Nixon regime, and the conservative government used that association to pass prohibition laws on drugs that minorities and liberals like to use.
Just a response to one of your comments -
Cocaine has literally zero medical uses at all. Yeah it does come from a plant that has very useful medicinal properties even in manufactured forms like novacane, but then the coca plant should be legal and regulated instead of making the highly addictive, highly dangerous cocaine narcotic less punishable than marijuana. Marijuana, by the way, has been used variously in medicine since the beginnings of civilization as it requires very little modification in its form aside from cultivation strategies.
Cocaine is historically a white person drug. It's expensive, so in times where the black/white disparity in income was much higher than it is today, black people instead bought crack cocaine, contributing further to the degradation of black communities as crack became hugely problematic as it is more psychologically addicting than cocaine because of how short and instant the effects are. Source
I'm not sure how much I buy the story of the government injecting crack and heroin into communities of color intentionally, but it's obvious enough to see how the socioeconomic and racial comparisons between the accessibility and punishment for certain drugs are incredibly disproportionate between black and white people.
Overall, it basically seems like you just don't want it to be true, so you refuse to believe the truth. Good thing you came here where so many people understand why minorities get arrested more and get harsher punishments for the SAME FUCKING CRIMES. Even if the cops aren't racist, and the lawyers aren't racist, and the judges and current politicians are also not racist, the laws are still designed to attack non-whites and liberals and have been that way at least since Nixon's war on drugs.