The “War on Drugs” and the Disparity in the Justice System

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]T[/dropcap]he United States irrefutably imprisons more people per capita than any other country in the world, largely owing to the “War on Drugs”. More or less, the “War on Drugs” is a campaign led by the government to reduce illegal drug trade in the United States which former President Richard Nixon launched in the early 1970s, and was reinforced by former President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Today, videos through social media often exhibit police brutality, misconduct and discriminatory shootings. That common story of how a minority was arrested or killed because they “ran” from law enforcement is just one trope in the drug war narrative. These stories are not always covered by the mainstream news and some of them are even anecdotal but at large mirror the racism in this so called war. However organizations such as The Drug Policy Alliance work to educate the people with statistics and numbers regarding this ongoing struggle:

• Nearly 80% of people in federal prison and almost 60 percent of people in state prison for drug offenses are black or Latino.
• Research shows that prosecutors are twice as likely to pursue a mandatory minimum sentence for black people as for white people charged with the same offense. Among people who received a mandatory minimum sentence in 2011, 38 percent were Latino and 31 percent were black.
• Black people and Native Americans are more likely to be killed by law enforcement than other racial or ethnic groups. They are often stereotyped as being violent or addicted to alcohol and other drugs. Experts believe that stigma and racism may play a major role in police-community interactions.
• More than 250,000 people have been deported from the United States for drug law violations every year since 2007.
• A 2015 report by Human Rights Watch found that deportations for drug possession offenses increased by 43 percent from 2007 to 2012.
• Simple cannabis possession was the fourth most common cause of deportation for any offense in 2013, and the most common cause of deportation for drug law violations. More than 13,000 people were deported in 2012 and 2013 just for cannabis possession.
• One in 13 black people of voting age are denied the right to vote because of laws that disenfranchise people with felony convictions.
• One in nine black children has an incarcerated parent, compared to one in 28 Latino children and one in 57 white children.

There are many things going on in the world—bigotry, racial tension, religious intolerance, patriarchy, walls, shutdowns, polar vortexes, you name it, are running rampant in our lives. Don’t let failed policies of the “War on Drugs” be one more worry in 2019.