Self-Defense & Violence Prevention Blog

A recent AlterNet article pointed out the absurdity of strict drug laws in comparison to the softer laws against violent crime. The article focuses on the draconian laws against the possession of crack cocaine. The first sentence of the article sums it up nicely: “When crack cocaine possession means 24 years in prison and manslaughter means only 3, you know something is seriously wrong with the U.S. criminal justice system.”

Of course, crack cocaine has such strict penalties, because poor people and black people use it most of all. These laws date back decades, and the long-running war on drugs has always been motivated greatly by racism and classism. The war on drugs has in many cases been a war on poor people and minorities. Remember, in the United States, more than four-fifths of people tried with crack cocaine offences are black, which helps explain why the penalties for crack cocaine are literally 100 times more strict than those for powder cocaine which is more often used by richer and whiter users.

I found the following excerpts out of the article particularly telling:

Nearly 6 out of 10 people in state prison for a drug offense have no history of violence or high-level drug-selling activity but are often receiving harsher sentences than people who do. People caught with the drug in 2004, the last year for which data is available, served an average of ten years in federal penitentiaries, while the average convict served 2.9 years for manslaughter, 3.1 years for assault and 5.4 years for sexual abuse.

[…]

A drug abuser whose drug of choice is powder cocaine would have to be found with more than two cups of it (500 grams) before receiving the same sentence as a person caught with two sugar packets worth (5 grams) of crack.

[…]

Since crack is made by cooking powder cocaine with baking soda or another base when it reaches the street retail level, the 100-to-1 ratio has served to exact harsher punishments on low-level dealers than the kingpins supplying the raw material. According to USSC data, low-level crack sellers are punished 300 times more severely than high-level, international cocaine traffickers on an imprisonment-per-gram basis.

I find the last statistic especially interesting, though unsurprising. The government often seems more interested in using drugs as an excuse to wage a war on non-violent people, but never actually stopping drug trafficking. Besides, the drug kingpins make enough money from the multi-billion drug industry that they can buy off cops and government officials. The government and powers that be have many reasons to keep the drug game going, which explains the CIA’s continued promotion of drug trafficking.

Throwing non-violent drug offenders in jails and prisons does not help protect the general working class, but it does make loads of money for the government, the private-owned prison industry, the police unions, the drug kingpins and their cronies. Legalizing drugs would take the multi-billion-dollar industry away from organized criminals.

Violence and victimizing crime are increased not by drugs but rather by the war on drugs.

At the very least, the government could make the drug laws consistent and take out the racism and classism. Or course, if they threw many people besides racial minorities and poor people in jail, then the general public might start to object to the whole idea of jailing non-violent people for victimless crimes. The government needs to keep the racist inconsistencies in drug laws, because few people seem to care when it’s the black and poor being oppressed.

What do you think?