Drug enforcement is not racist
By John P. Walters and David W. Murray
December 16, 2014
Mayor de Blasio seems to believe that law enforcement doesn’t so much protect minority communities as harm them. His administration’s latest effort will have the NYPD reduce enforcement of marijuana laws — a move toward legalization under the banner of social justice.
The push for marijuana legalization begins with the claim that the drug is essentially benign or even beneficial.
It follows that arresting people for using marijuana is unjust, with possession arrests damaging lives, filling prisons and wasting police resources.
Worse, the enforcement of marijuana laws causes the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of African-American males and represents an assault on civil rights, if not a “war” on communities of color.
The claims are wrong: Actual risk of arrest while using marijuana is stunningly low. Roughly 5 percent of US arrests in a given year are for marijuana possession. We calculate about one arrest for marijuana possession for every 34,000 joints smoked.
Drug arrests simply aren’t a significant portion of law-enforcement activity, and possession arrests for marijuana certainly don’t fill our prisons.
A 2008 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that fewer than 0.3 percent of those incarcerated in state prison (which is where most US inmates are incarcerated) are there for simple marijuana-possession offenses — and many of those have just “pled down” from more serious offenses.
Are African-Americans targeted victims of the drug laws? No — race is not the driver of “disparate impact.”
First, African-American drug-use rates are likely higher than most studies assume: Researchers usually rely on surveys of drug use, but such surveys undercount dropouts, the homeless and the imprisoned — populations in which African-Americans are disproportionately represented and drug use is high.
Second, African-Americans are arrested for drug trafficking more often than whites — crimes that more commonly lead to prison time.
Third, African-American drug use often occurs in areas with intensive policing, such as urban street corners, which means that the risk of arrest for African-Americans is higher than for whites, whose use of drugs is typically less conspicuous.
Fourth, it’s not just drug-related crime where we see racial disproportions in arrests and incarcerations: The same is true for almost all crimes. Eliminating drug-law enforcement would change little.
In short, Vanita Gupta, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, is simply wrong to say that the “war on drugs has been a war on communities of color” — unless she’s willing to argue that virtually all efforts to combat crime are wars on communities of color.
That is, the disproportions of arrests, incarcerations and victimization that afflict many African-American communities are a direct consequence of the disproportionate crime (and devastating suffering from crime) that plagues those communities.
Responding to this reality in the 1980s, then-Sen. Joe Biden led the bipartisan effort to pass tough new laws against cocaine and crack.
Lawmakers have since made efforts to ensure the laws are more fair, but we shouldn’t forget how bad the epidemic was, and how law enforcement worked to protect victimized communities.
The problem isn’t the presence of the laws against drugs. Rather, the problem is the presence and use of illegal drugs.
Drug use is strongly associated with failure to finish high school. It has crippling effects on securing employment or joining the military — critical pathways out of poverty.
continued here http://nypost.com/2014/12/16/drug-enforcement-is-not-racist/
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The "experts"
Since the drug war is not something that promotes "‘global security, prosperity and freedom’.[4] It promotes public policy change in accordance with its stated values of a "commitment to free markets and individual responsibility," I think this clown is full of it.
No surprises there.
The truth is the policies you promoted FAILED to do anything positive and ended up causing a great deal af harm and they are certainly enforced differently based on race. You can try to keep making it up as you go along and publishing you propoganda, but the world is on to you guys.
By John P. Walters and David W. Murray
December 16, 2014
Mayor de Blasio seems to believe that law enforcement doesn’t so much protect minority communities as harm them. His administration’s latest effort will have the NYPD reduce enforcement of marijuana laws — a move toward legalization under the banner of social justice.
The push for marijuana legalization begins with the claim that the drug is essentially benign or even beneficial.
It follows that arresting people for using marijuana is unjust, with possession arrests damaging lives, filling prisons and wasting police resources.
Worse, the enforcement of marijuana laws causes the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of African-American males and represents an assault on civil rights, if not a “war” on communities of color.
The claims are wrong: Actual risk of arrest while using marijuana is stunningly low. Roughly 5 percent of US arrests in a given year are for marijuana possession. We calculate about one arrest for marijuana possession for every 34,000 joints smoked.
Drug arrests simply aren’t a significant portion of law-enforcement activity, and possession arrests for marijuana certainly don’t fill our prisons.
A 2008 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that fewer than 0.3 percent of those incarcerated in state prison (which is where most US inmates are incarcerated) are there for simple marijuana-possession offenses — and many of those have just “pled down” from more serious offenses.
Are African-Americans targeted victims of the drug laws? No — race is not the driver of “disparate impact.”
First, African-American drug-use rates are likely higher than most studies assume: Researchers usually rely on surveys of drug use, but such surveys undercount dropouts, the homeless and the imprisoned — populations in which African-Americans are disproportionately represented and drug use is high.
Second, African-Americans are arrested for drug trafficking more often than whites — crimes that more commonly lead to prison time.
Third, African-American drug use often occurs in areas with intensive policing, such as urban street corners, which means that the risk of arrest for African-Americans is higher than for whites, whose use of drugs is typically less conspicuous.
Fourth, it’s not just drug-related crime where we see racial disproportions in arrests and incarcerations: The same is true for almost all crimes. Eliminating drug-law enforcement would change little.
In short, Vanita Gupta, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, is simply wrong to say that the “war on drugs has been a war on communities of color” — unless she’s willing to argue that virtually all efforts to combat crime are wars on communities of color.
That is, the disproportions of arrests, incarcerations and victimization that afflict many African-American communities are a direct consequence of the disproportionate crime (and devastating suffering from crime) that plagues those communities.
Responding to this reality in the 1980s, then-Sen. Joe Biden led the bipartisan effort to pass tough new laws against cocaine and crack.
Lawmakers have since made efforts to ensure the laws are more fair, but we shouldn’t forget how bad the epidemic was, and how law enforcement worked to protect victimized communities.
The problem isn’t the presence of the laws against drugs. Rather, the problem is the presence and use of illegal drugs.
Drug use is strongly associated with failure to finish high school. It has crippling effects on securing employment or joining the military — critical pathways out of poverty.
continued here http://nypost.com/2014/12/16/drug-enforcement-is-not-racist/
...............................................................................................................................
The "experts"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._Walters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Institute
Since the drug war is not something that promotes "‘global security, prosperity and freedom’.[4] It promotes public policy change in accordance with its stated values of a "commitment to free markets and individual responsibility," I think this clown is full of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Institute
No surprises there.
NSFW:
http://www.hudson.org/experts/1004-david-w-murray
NSFW:
The truth is the policies you promoted FAILED to do anything positive and ended up causing a great deal af harm and they are certainly enforced differently based on race. You can try to keep making it up as you go along and publishing you propoganda, but the world is on to you guys.
