The
scuttlebutt is that Attorney General Eric Holder is poised to say what has long
been obvious to anyone who has the faintest notion about how the wildly failed,
flawed war on drugs has been waged for three decades. The obvious is that the
war on drugs has been a ruthless, relentless and naked war on minorities,
especially African-Americans. In the coming weeks, Holder may tell exactly how
he'll wind that war down. It shouldn't surprise if he does. President Obama and
Holder have been hinting for a while that it's time to rethink how the war is
being fought and who its prime casualties have been. Their successful push a
few years back to get Congress to finally wipe out a good deal of the blatantly
racially skewed harsh drug sentencing for crack versus powder cocaine
possession was the first hint. Another is the mixed signals that both have sent
about federal marijuana prosecutions, sometimes tough, sometimes lax.
But
if, and more likely when, Holder acts on much needed and long overdue drug law
reforms, he'll do it standing on solid ground. Past surveys by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention on the sex and drug habits of Americans and a
legion of other similar surveys have tossed the ugly glare on the naked
race-tainted war on drugs. They found that whites and blacks use drugs in about
the same rate.
Yet,
more than 70 percent of those prosecuted in federal courts for drug possession
and sale (mostly small amounts of crack cocaine) and given stiff mandatory
sentences are blacks. Federal prosecutors and lawmakers in the past and some at
present still justify the disparity with the retort that crack cocaine is
dangerous and threatening, and lead to waves of gang shoot-outs, turf battles,
and thousands of terrorized residents in poor black communities. In some
instances, that's true, and police and prosecutors are right to hit back hard
at the violence.
The
majority, however, of those who deal and use crack cocaine aren't violent prone
gang members, but poor, and increasingly female, young blacks. They clearly
need treatment not long prison stretches.
It's
also a myth that powder cocaine is benign and has no criminal and violent taint
to it. In a comprehensive survey in 2002, the Office of National Drug Control
Policy, the White House's low profile task force to combat drug use, attributed
shoplifting, burglary, theft, larceny, money laundering and even the transport
of undocumented workers in some cities to powdered cocaine use. It also found
that powder cocaine users were more likely to commit domestic violence crimes.
The report also fingered powder cocaine users as prime dealers of other drugs
that included heroin, meth and crack cocaine.
The
big difference is that the top-heavy drug use by young whites -- and the crime
and violence that go with it -- has never stirred any public outcry for mass
arrests, prosecutions, and tough prison sentences for white drug dealers, many
of whom deal drugs that are directly linked to serious crime and violence.
Whites unlucky enough to get popped for drug possession are treated with
compassion, prayer sessions, expensive psychiatric counseling, treatment and
rehab programs, and drug diversion programs. And they should be. But so should
those blacks and other non-whites victimized by discriminatory drug laws.
A
frank admission that the laws are biased and unfair, and have not done much to
combat the drug plague, would be an admission of failure. It could ignite a
real soul searching over whether all the billions of dollars that have been
squandered in the failed and flawed drug war -- the lives ruined by it, and the
families torn apart by the rigid and unequal enforcement of the laws -- has
really accomplished anything.
This
might call into question why people use and abuse drugs in the first place --
and if it is really the government's business to turn the legal screws on some
drug users while turning a blind eye to others?
The
greatest fallout from the nation's failed drug policy is that it has further
embedded the widespread notion that the drug problem is exclusively a black
problem. This makes it easy for on-the-make politicians to grab votes, garner
press attention, and balloon state prison budgets to jail more black offenders,
while continuing to feed the illusion that we are winning the drug war.
In an
interview, Holder on that point was blunt, "There's been a decimation of
certain communities, in particular communities of color." This is no accident.
The policy deliberately targeted those communities due to a lethal mix of
racism, criminal justice system profit (someone has got to fill up the cells to
justify building more prisons, hiring and maintaining waves of corrections
officers, and bloating state budgets in the process), political expediency, and
media fed public mania over drug use. This is why Obama and Holder have
delicately, but to their credit, publicly inched toward a rethink of the drug
war and who it benefits and who it hurts. They should be applauded for that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He
is a frequent MSNBC contributor. He is an associate editor of New America
Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio
Network. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KTYM 1460 AM Radio
Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter:
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