US Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow?

[MariaTS]

According to the bible, your body is a temple of God and you should not harm your body by putting unnecessary and unnatural chemicals into it. Medications are okay, as long as you need them. If you put something in your body that you do not need then you are committing a sin. So advocating for legalized drugs that are unnecessary as well as unnatural is, at best, heretical. Also, comparing US Drug Laws to the Jim Crow Laws trivializes the suffering that black americans went through.

 

[St_Francis]

Unfortunately, some people need to fight for causes where there are none. By associating drug laws with Jim Crow, an emotional, not intellectual reaction is hoped for.

In Detroit, the dropout rate is high. There is a program where volunteers try to help. A high percentage of black children are born to unwed mothers. There are few jobs. Selling illegal drugs, for some, is not just a way to get by but to get large amounts of money. Black people primarily live in all black neighborhoods.

While redistributing monies into poor black neighborhoods and schools might be a good idea, I think more parental involvement and community involvement is necessary. If mom is working, there may be too little time for this but sometimes other relatives pitch in. Discipline is another problem. It’s difficult to learn if not much respect is shown to teachers in the first place. It’s difficult to look toward the future if you know that few jobs are waiting for you once you graduate high school.

I think one approach would be for the community to help guide kids through the school system and to help them find work after.

God bless,
Ed

There is a very high relationship between all sorts of bad outcomes–early sexual activity, early parenthood, low school scores, low school behavior, and incarceration–and growing up in a disrupted family–single parents, divoced parents, non-biological parents, foster homes…

*“The relationship between family structure and crime is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature.”
**Source: *E. Kamarck, William Galston, Putting Children First, Progressive Policy Inst. 1990

Via Dolorosa,
I hope that you are still reading these replies to your question! I think that yours is an important question, esp when it relates to what to teach children.

A couple of comments on the video: she says that police are targeting blacks in their quest to arrest those who break laws against drugs, but she also cites as a motivation the fact that the proceeds from drug sales can be seized. Why then would police officers target poor people? Why would they not target *rich *drug dealers? In which case, why are they *not *arresting people more proportionately to their numbers?

I would say that the reality is different from what she believes. There is a difference in trouble kids, esp boys, get into depending on the state of their family, and it is the unfortunate fact that more blacks are raised in single-parent households than whites, proportionately speaking. While it may be true that more blacks proportionately are arrested, and more of those arrested are imprisoned, we do not know why that is. Many times people will plead down for a reduced overall sentence, so that if a person is arrested in connection with two crimes, they plead guilty to one crime and are sentenced for it. I am not saying that this is the case, but that this is a possiblity. It is very difficult to get actual information about what is going on, and without knowing what is really going on, we can’t say that what she says is going on is actually the case.

And on top of all that, *if *she is correct, then what I would say is that more white offenders should be arrested and imprisoned rather than fewer blacks. The fact that people who have broken the law are put into prison is not unfair. The fact that some people who have broken the exact same law under the same circumstances (same previous record, same criminal activity) get off–*if *that is happening-- is a different matter than some being imprisoned, and actually has no effect on those already in prison. Her idea seems to be that (IF) the laws are unfairly applied, there needs to be fewer blacks sent to prison to make it fair. But that would not be right, to not imprison those who deserve it because others who deserve it are not being imprisoned, and if more who deserved it were imprisoned, that would make no difference to those already imprisoned.

 

[edwest2]

And what is on the radio and TV, especially for young black men? Disrespecting women, carrying guns, being thugs and so on. And how are young black women presented in music videos? With respect? As objects.

Bad enough that you can buy a T-shirt related to your favorite gangsta rapper rolled up to look like a kilo of cocaine, you can get rims for your car autographed by P. Diddy (currently, Diddy) to commemorate his being chased by the cops. It’s cool to be bad, violent and disrespectful.

We all need positive role models.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Via_Dolorosa]

There is a very high relationship between all sorts of bad outcomes–early sexual activity, early parenthood, low school scores, low school behavior, and incarceration–and growing up in a disrupted family–single parents, divoced parents, non-biological parents, foster homes…

“The relationship between family structure and crime is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature.”
***Source: ***E. Kamarck, William Galston, Putting Children First, Progressive Policy Inst. 1990

Via Dolorosa,
I hope that you are still reading these replies to your question! I think that yours is an important question, esp when it relates to what to teach children.

A couple of comments on the video: she says that police are targeting blacks in their quest to arrest those who break laws against drugs, but she also cites as a motivation the fact that the proceeds from drug sales can be seized. Why then would police officers target poor people? Why would they not target *rich *drug dealers? In which case, why are they *not *arresting people more proportionately to their numbers?

I would say that the reality is different from what she believes. There is a difference in trouble kids, esp boys, get into depending on the state of their family, and it is the unfortunate fact that more blacks are raised in single-parent households than whites, proportionately speaking. While it may be true that more blacks proportionately are arrested, and more of those arrested are imprisoned, we do not know why that is. Many times people will plead down for a reduced overall sentence, so that if a person is arrested in connection with two crimes, they plead guilty to one crime and are sentenced for it. I am not saying that this is the case, but that this is a possiblity. It is very difficult to get actual information about what is going on, and without knowing what is really going on, we can’t say that what she says is going on is actually the case.

And on top of all that, *if *she is correct, then what I would say is that more white offenders should be arrested and imprisoned rather than fewer blacks. The fact that people who have broken the law are put into prison is not unfair. The fact that some people who have broken the exact same law under the same circumstances (same previous record, same criminal activity) get off–*if *that is happening-- is a different matter than some being imprisoned, and actually has no effect on those already in prison. Her idea seems to be that (IF) the laws are unfairly applied, there needs to be fewer blacks sent to prison to make it fair. But that would not be right, to not imprison those who deserve it because others who deserve it are not being imprisoned, and if more who deserved it were imprisoned, that would make no difference to those already imprisoned.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. For me it was never about the crime for which the offender should beheld responsible. My grievance was with the length of the punishment. It seems that black people get longer sentences than white people for the same crime. I sat in on courtrooms in my county. Although we have few black people here, I could see the difference in dealing with hispanics. The point that is rolling around my own head is now that prisons have gone private, do we need to populate prisons to keep the profit level up. I was hoping someone could help me with this.
Thank you so much for addressing me personally, since I have been neglectling this article due to a hostile response.
God bless you

 

[estesbob]

Thank you for your thoughtful response. For me it was never about the crime for which the offender should beheld responsible. My grievance was with the length of the punishment. It seems that black people get longer sentences than white people for the same crime. I sat in on courtrooms in my county. Although we have few black people here, I could see the difference in dealing with hispanics. The point that is rolling around my own head is now that prisons have gone private, do we need to populate prisons to keep the profit level up. I was hoping someone could help me with this.
Thank you so much for addressing me personally, since I have been neglectling this article due to a hostile response.
God bless you

I believe the problem is the disparity in sentences given to those using crack cocaine, which is generally used by those in the lower economic class and powdered cocaine which is generally used by the higher economic class. Using crack cocaine generally carries a much higher sentence than using powdered cocaine.

In my opinion the best solution to this is to legalize all drugs and use the money saved from enforcement to treat those who abuse it. The war on drugs has caused more erosion or civil liberties than any other action since inception of our country

 

[St_Francis]

Thank you for your thoughtful response. For me it was never about the crime for which the offender should beheld responsible. My grievance was with the length of the punishment. It seems that black people get longer sentences than white people for the same crime. I sat in on courtrooms in my county. Although we have few black people here, I could see the difference in dealing with hispanics. The point that is rolling around my own head is now that prisons have gone private, do we need to populate prisons to keep the profit level up. I was hoping someone could help me with this.
Thank you so much for addressing me personally, since I have been neglectling this article due to a hostile response.
God bless you

I think that just looking at what happens in a courtroom doesn’t show everything that is going on in a case, because so much happens behind the scenes. for example, Bob may plead guilty to X because he is pleading down from X+Y+Z, so he gets the maximum sentence. Pete pleads guilty to X because he knows there are 5 witnesses, 3 of whom are police officers and he doesn’t have any money for a lawyer anyway. Since there was no evidence of his having committed Y or Z, he gets a lesser sentence than Bob.

But we don’t see all this.

Remember the driving while black problem a few years ago along the NJ Turnpike? Here’s an article detailing “the rest of the story.” (Warning: gratuitous anti-Catholic remark)

here’s another article which I found along the way, which I thought was interesting because it went a little bit into the perceptions and reactions of the people living in areas where a large number of minority people are arrested.

Oh, they both seem to be written by the same person!

 

[edwest2]

I believe the problem is the disparity in sentences given to those using crack cocaine, which is generally used by those in the lower economic class and powdered cocaine which is generally used by the higher economic class. Using crack cocaine generally carries a much higher sentence than using powdered cocaine.

In my opinion the best solution to this is to legalize all drugs and use the money saved from enforcement to treat those who abuse it. The war on drugs has caused more erosion or civil liberties than any other action since inception of our country

Can you describe which “civil liberties” you mean?

Thanks,
Ed

 

[estesbob]

Can you describe which “civil liberties” you mean?

Thanks,
Ed

The war on drugs has led to the proliferation of no knock searches of people’s homes. Seizures of houses and cars for small amounts of drugs. more aggressive wiretapping laws Overcrowding of jails from small time drug users and/or pushers, increased violence in our inner cities and along our borders, RICO laws used to go after organized drug cartels are increasingy being used to go after things like antiabortion protesters and other crimes that were never intended when the law was passed.

 

[edwest2]

The war on drugs has led to the proliferation of no knock searches of people’s homes. Seizures of houses and cars for small amounts of drugs. more aggressive wiretapping laws Overcrowding of jails from small time drug users and/or pushers, increased violence in our inner cities and along our borders, RICO laws used to go after organized drug cartels are increasingy being used to go after things like antiabortion protesters and other crimes that were never intended when the law was passed.

I see. So you think it should be legalized and everyone should be left to their own devices? Mom, dad, the kids? It doesn’t matter? Then when the bodies are brought to the morgue or the hospital and those who are crippled become society’s burden? And what of those who just zone out instead of dealing with reality? What of their lost potential?

Do you think the government is your enemy unless it gives you what you want? The government was put there to aid the general welfare, not tear it down. Only those with something to hide have something to fear. When law enforcement does the wrong thing, it doesn’t matter how poor the people involved are, they can sue.

God bless,
Ed

 

[lanza27]

answers.com/topic/anti-drug-abuse-act-1986

Historically this is a great discussion.

It is true that the sentencing minimums for Crack vs. Cocaine are very disparate. When the law is applied to the population we see much harder sentences for Black Americans, who frequent crack, than for White Americans, who frequent cocain.

The problem is most people in their minds take a big jump in the next part of the thought process and immediately deem the American Justice system inherently racist. And most, of course blame the Reagan administration and republicans in general for this “racist” policy.

Here are the facts, the disparity in sentencing was intentional. Democrats themselves increased the ratio. Most Black Congreessman supported the bill. Would we dare to call the Black Congressman racist? The “all-inclusive” Democratic party racist? Of course not.

There intention was to combat the crack epidemic in the black community. They thought greater penalties would decrease the usage. Anyone involved in the Addiction field know that the penalty has nothing to do with it. But at the time this information escaped those implementing the law.

So you have a disparate law in place on PURPOSE. The goal was to help those that the law disparatley effected.

We seem to have lost the context of this disparity and would rather deem the whole system racist than to actually look at the facts and the intentions of those implementing the law.

Thanks.

p.s. this doesn’t mean I believe the law works or should continue as such. Just stating the history behind the law.

 

[pnewton]

So advocating for legalized drugs that are unnecessary as well as unnatural is, at best, heretical. .

I think I understand estesbob postition on this. He is certainly not committing heresy. There is no dogma that he is persistantly denying. We already allow adults to legally injest two drugs, alcohol and nicotene. There is also little denying that the war on drugs has not proven a very successful endeavor. Perhaps a new approach is in order.

 

[estesbob]

I see. So you think it should be legalized and everyone should be left to their own devices? Mom, dad, the kids? It doesn’t matter? Then when the bodies are brought to the morgue or the hospital and those who are crippled become society’s burden? And what of those who just zone out instead of dealing with reality? What of their lost potential?

We already do it with alchohol which caues far more carnage than drug use.

Do you think the government is your enemy unless it gives you what you want? The government was put there to aid the general welfare, not tear it down. Only those with something to hide have something to fear. When law enforcement does the wrong thing, it doesn’t matter how poor the people involved are, they can sue.?quote]

The idea that a inner cirty back kid can sue the govt if he is treated wrong is specious. The war on drugs is abysmal failure. It has resulted in a whole genration of black men be incarcerated and their lives destroyed. It costs us uncoutned billions in enforcement and interdiction.-money for which we have very little to pay for.

 

[estesbob]

According to the bible, your body is a temple of God and you should not harm your body by putting unnecessary and unnatural chemicals into it. Medications are okay, as long as you need them. If you put something in your body that you do not need then you are committing a sin. So advocating for legalized drugs that are unnecessary as well as unnatural is, at best, heretical. Also, comparing US Drug Laws to the Jim Crow Laws trivializes the suffering that black americans went through.

I am by no means suggetsting people use drugs-just the way we try to prevent them from doing so is ineffective and causes more harm than good. I didnt suggest this could be compared to Jim Crow-just that war on drugs falls disproportionately of Poor and minorities.

 

[edwest2]

We already do it with alchohol which caues far more carnage than drug use.

Please, don’t change the subject. All you’re saying is let’s just give people the option to add additional methods for causing carnage in their lives and the lives of their families.

And you still haven’t addressed the health care issue. So, the money used for chasing minor dealers and locking them up goes into treatment. Then what? How much more carnage are you going to say is allowable?

All I see is the following. The mother visits her boy in the hospital.

“But mom. It was legal.”

“Yeah, and now your mind and body are damaged. Is that the kind of freedom you wanted?”

God bless,
Ed

 

[SalesianSDB]

Your example of the kid in the hospital is only valid if minors are allowed it. Alcohol isn’t legal for minors what makes you think pot is?

I used to be against the decriminalization of marijuana until I joined debate club and this was a topic frequently mentioned. I originally didn’t have facts or anything to back up my claim to let it stay the way it is, but the other side had good arguments. There isn’t any reason it shouldn’t be decriminalized.

I am all for decriminalization of marijuana, not legalization. A person caught smoking a joint could get life in jail without parole, but a rapist or murderer could get 25 years to life with parole.

The thing is the war on drugs isn’t working. We are loosing the war.

The government shouldn’t be telling you what you can and can’t put into your body. The role of the government is to protect our liberties. Constitutionally, the government doesn’t have the right to control what we intake to our bodies. Really, it should be left to the states to decide.

A friend of mine told me this (I believe he was quoting an Eastern monk), “How many husbands get high on pot and then beat the hell out of their wives? But alcoholics do that, and it’s legal.”

Prohibition didn’t work. This isn’t working.

And probably the best argument for legalizing it is, “Legalize it. Restrict it. And tax it to death. That’ll be a good was of helping the debt.” But I’m not to sure about that.

I’d never do pot or drugs, but I can’t stop someone from doing them and neither should the government.

 

[estesbob]

Please, don’t change the subject. All you’re saying is let’s just give people the option to add additional methods for causing carnage in their lives and the lives of their families.

Yes-because overall it will cause far carnage than it is now

And you still haven’t addressed the health care issue. So, the money used for chasing minor dealers and locking them up goes into treatment. Then what? How much more carnage are you going to say is allowable?

We spend tens of billions fighting the war on drugs. i suspect that we can apy the extra health care and have money left over if we stop this useless war

All I see is the following. The mother visits her boy in the hospital.

“But mom. It was legal.”

“Yeah, and now your mind and body are damaged. Is that the kind of freedom you wanted?”

Which is already hapening tens of thousands times a day with the addtion of more thousands shot, maimed, killed and imprisioned.

God bless,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

Your example of the kid in the hospital is only valid if minors are allowed it. Alcohol isn’t legal for minors what makes you think pot is?

I used to be against the decriminalization of marijuana until I joined debate club and this was a topic frequently mentioned. I originally didn’t have facts or anything to back up my claim to let it stay the way it is, but the other side had good arguments. There isn’t any reason it shouldn’t be decriminalized.

I am all for decriminalization of marijuana, not legalization. A person caught smoking a joint could get life in jail without parole, but a rapist or murderer could get 25 years to life with parole.

The thing is the war on drugs isn’t working. We are loosing the war.

The government shouldn’t be telling you what you can and can’t put into your body. The role of the government is to protect our liberties. Constitutionally, the government doesn’t have the right to control what we intake to our bodies. Really, it should be left to the states to decide.

A friend of mine told me this (I believe he was quoting an Eastern monk), “How many husbands get high on pot and then beat the hell out of their wives? But alcoholics do that, and it’s legal.”

Prohibition didn’t work. This isn’t working.

And probably the best argument for legalizing it is, “Legalize it. Restrict it. And tax it to death. That’ll be a good was of helping the debt.” But I’m not to sure about that.

I’d never do pot or drugs, but I can’t stop someone from doing them and neither should the government.

Yes, I’ve seen the tax it to death mantra in many places. It won’t happen, because unlike distilling alcohol, all you need is some dirt and water to grow marijuana. Nobody is going to pay taxes on this, and if they do, all it will take is a “tax it to death” increase for them to either grow it or get the non-taxed variety.

It’s bad advertising, but the pot promoters want what they want.

Yeah. I heard it in the late 60s. The government is evil. Unless, of course, the government gives them something they want. As I’m sure you know, people around the world are doing illegal stuff right now. Who’s stopping them? If you are doing nothing wrong then you should have nothing to fear from the government.

As a police officer friend told me, You don’t want a speeding ticket? Don’t speed.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Via_Dolorosa]

I believe the problem is the disparity in sentences given to those using crack cocaine, which is generally used by those in the lower economic class and powdered cocaine which is generally used by the higher economic class. Using crack cocaine generally carries a much higher sentence than using powdered cocaine.

Good catch. From your mouth to Congress’ ears.

huffingtonpost.com/jasmine-tyler/congress-passes-historic_b_662625.html

 

[pnewton]

Please, don’t change the subject.

Alcohol **is **a drug and, thus, the subject. It is the best parallel one can have. Just like bootlegging funded gang development and violence during Prohibition, today the illegal drug trade funds gangs and their violence.

 

[edwest2]

Alcohol **is **a drug and, thus, the subject. It is the best parallel one can have. Just like bootlegging funded gang development and violence during Prohibition, today the illegal drug trade funds gangs and their violence.

Yes, Prohibition is the automatic response of too many. Why do people sell illegal drugs? They often have no other way to get money. After the drugs are taken away, what will they do? They will rob people, and businesses using guns and violence if necessary. In Detroit, a group of people drove a large van into a pharmacy at night and took what they could. On occasion, ATMs are physically removed by people using full size trucks. There will still be desperate people and gangs looking to take whatever they can. So-called “home invasions” are occurring in the ‘better’ parts of town right now.

God bless,
Ed