The War on Drugs Is Really a War on Minorities

By Arianna Huffington, Los Angeles Times
Posted on March 27, 2007, Printed on March 27, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/49782/

There is a subject being forgotten in the 2008

 Democratic race for the White House.

While all the major candidates are vying

For the black and Latino vote, they are

 completely ignoring one of the most pressing

Issues affecting those constituencies:

 the failed "war on drugs" -- a war that has

 morphed into a war on people of color.

Consider this: According to a 2006 report

By the American Civil Liberties Union,

African Americans make up an estimated

15% of drug users, but they account for

37% of those arrested on

Drug charges, 59% of those convicted and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison.

 Or consider this: The U.S. has 260,000

 people in state prisons on nonviolent

Drug charges; 183,200 (more than 70%)

 of them are black or Latino.

Such facts have been bandied about for years.

But our politicians have consistently failed to

Take action on what has

Become yet another third rail of American politics,

 a subject to be avoided at all costs by elected

Officials who fear being incinerated on Contact

For being soft on crime.

Perhaps you hoped this would change during a spirited Democratic presidential primary?

 Unfortunately, a quick search of the top

Democratic hopefuls'

 websites reveals that not one of them -

- not Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama,

Not John Edwards, not Joe Biden, not

 Chris Dodd, not Bill Richardson --

Even mentions the drug war, let alone

Offers any solutions.

The silence coming from Clinton and

Obama is particularly deafening.

Obama has written eloquently about

 his own struggle with drugs but has

Not addressed the tragic

 effect the war on drugs is

having on African American communities.

As for Clinton, she flew into Selma, Ala.,

 to reinforce her image as the wife of the

black community's most beloved politician and

Has made much of her plan to attract female voters,

 but she has ignored the suffering of poor,

Black women right in her own backyard.

Located down the road from her Chappaqua, N.Y.,

 home are two prisons housing female inmates,

Taconic and Bedford. Forty-

Eight percent of the women in Taconic are there

For nonviolent drug offenses; 78% of those

 in the prison are African American or Latino.

And Bedford, the state's only maximum-security prison for

Women, is home to some of the worst victims of New York's draconian Rockefeller-era drug laws -- mothers and

Grandmothers whose first brush with the law resulted in their being locked away for 15 years or more on nonviolent drug charges.

Yet even though these prisons are so nearby,

 Clinton has turned a blind eye to the plight

Of the women locked away there, notably

 refusing to speak out on their behalf.

Avoidance of this issue comes at a very stiff

 price (and not just the more than $50 billion

 a year we're spending on the failed

Drug war). The toll is paid in shattered families,

Devastated inner cities and wasted lives

 (with no apologies for using that term).

During the 10 years I've been writing

about the injustice of the

Drug war, I've repeatedly watched as politicians paid lip service to the problem but then ducked as the sickening status quo claimed more victims.

In California, of the 171,000 inmates jamming the state's wildly overcrowded prisons, 36,000 are nonviolent drug offenders.

I remember in 1999 asking Dan Bartlett, then the campaign

Spokesman for candidate George W. Bush, about Bush's position on the outrageous disparity between the sentences

Meted out for possession of crack cocaine and those given for possession of powder cocaine -- a disparity that has helped fill

U.S. prisons with black low-level drug users (80% of sentenced crack defendants are black). Federal sentencing guidelines

Dictate that judges impose the same five-year prison sentence for possession of five grams of crack or 500 grams of powder cocaine.

"The different sentencing for crack cocaine and powder cocaine is something that there's no doubt needs to be addressed,"

Bartlett told me. But in the more than six years since Bush and Bartlett moved into the White House, the problem has gone unaddressed. No doubt about it.

Maybe the president will suddenly wake up and decide to take on the issue five days before he leaves office. That's what Bill Clinton did, writing a 2001 New York Times Op-Ed article in

Which he trumpeted the need to "immediately reduce the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences" --

Conveniently ignoring the fact that he had the power to solve it for eight years and did nothing.

When it mattered, he maintained an imperial silence. Then, when it didn't, he became Captain Courageous. And he lamented the

Failures of our drug policy as though he had been an innocent bystander rather than the chief executive (indeed, the prison population doubled on his watch).

The injustice is so egregious that a conservative senator, Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), is now leading the charge in Congress to

ease crack sentences. "I believe that as a matter of law enforcement and good public policy, crack cocaine sentences

Are too heavy and can't be justified," he said. "People don't want us to be soft on crime, but I think we ought to make the law more rational."

There's a talking point Hillary and Obama should adopt. It's both the right thing and the smart thing. Because of

Disenfranchisement statutes, large numbers of black men who

were convicted of drug crimes are ineligible to vote, even those who have fully paid their debt to society.

A 2000 study found that 1.4 million African American men -- 13% of the total black male population -- were unable to vote in the

2000 election because of state laws barring felons access to the polls. In Florida, one in three black men is permanently

Disqualified from voting. Think that might have made a difference in the 2000 race?

 Our shortsighted drug laws have become the 21st century manifestation of Jim Crow.

Shouldn't this be an issue Democratic presidential candidates deem worthy of their attention?

Find more Arianna at the Huffington Post.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/49782/