Drug Disparities

Perhaps one of the biggest casualties of the on going drug war is how the law views drug charges and the severity on which they are punished. You’ll find that, for the most part, crimes in America are punished in accordance with the severity of the crime. This is not exactly the case when it comes to drug charges. Charges can even vary between people and the type of drugs they were carrying at the time. You would be hard pressed to find a similarity in charges when it comes to how cases are handled depending on whether someone was using powdered cocaine or crack, even though they are essentially the same drug. This does not just end with basic arrests though, since the harsher penalties for drug offenses were introduced in the 1980’s there has even been a massive spike in minorities being arrested and incarcerated for their “lower class” drug use.

One of the largest differences in the supposed “war on drugs” today are the absurdly harsh penalties on people that carry “crack” cocaine as opposed to regular powdered cocaine. An article written by Marcia G. Shein examines the differences in sentencing when dealing with these two “different” drugs and the conclusions she comes to are horrifying. People caught in possession of crack cocaine are punished up to 100 times harsher than someone who is in possession of powdered cocaine. This would give someone who was caught with the intent to distribute one pound of powdered cocaine significantly less time in prison than someone who was caught trying to distribute only five grams of crack cocaine.( http://www.drugtext.org/library/articles/shein01.htm)

Because of the focus on punishing crack users, people have viewed the change in legislations towards these kinds of offenses as an attack on minority communities and the poor. This is due to cracks cheap street price as well as the ease in which it can be produced and distributed. This would also explain the government’s preoccupation with keeping marijuana illegal and the penalties involving marijuana use remaining so harsh. One of the more startling statistics being used to support the “anti-poor people” and “anti-minority” sentiment of these harsh drug penalties is that there are actually far more black males in prison for drug offenses, however minor they may be, than there are currently attending college. Unfortunately, there isn’t any kind of easy way to see if these laws are intentionally targeting the poorer population or if the nation itself really has that big of a drug problem.

While crack and cocaine charges are definitely of the more serious violations, what about the people that end up in prison for marijuana? A 1997 prison survey shows an astounding number of the prison population is serving time for marijuana related offenses. A good 18 percent is serving time in federal prisons for drug related charges, of these 11 percent of the inmates have been charged with marijuana violations. Frankly, these numbers show a pretty shocking revelation. Are these otherwise good citizens that are picked up because they were caught smoking a little reefer? Upon closer inspection, it shows that of the people serving for marijuana related charges, only 2.2 percent of this population were convicted for possession, and an even smaller amount, about 1 percent, were first time offenders. Frankly, this puts a bit of a dent in the pro-marijuana party that seems to state that cannabis users that are picked up for first time possession charges are taking up a large amount of the prison system or adding to overcrowding.

With some research, the rules behind drug sentencing involving marijuana actually appears to be quite fair. An article published by the Bureau of Justice explains just how flexible the sentencing is. The system is broken down