1980: Criminal Justice Inequity
Despite roughly equal drug use, discriminatory sentencing placed more African American men in jail than white men.
Until the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, the sentencing disparity between crack (a concentrated form of cocaine used more by Black urban populations) and powdered cocaine (used more by suburban white populations) was 100:1. That is, defendants convicted of possessing five grams of crack might receive a minimum five-year mandatory sentence while defendants convicted of possessing five hundred grams of powdered cocaine might face the same sentence. Even with the passing of the Fair Sentencing Act, “there is still significant differential punishment for two types of cocaine use” (Feagin, 2014, p. 159). Feagin notes that
There has been only a little change in harsh mandatory sentencing laws in spite of evidence that they are obviously discriminatory… while illegal drug use is roughly as common among white men as among black men, black men are far more likely than white men to be arrested for illegal drug crimes. This is the reason why there are disproportionately large numbers of black men in prisons. (p. 160)
Figure 1: US Rates of Adult Drug Arrests by Race, 1980-2007
Source: Human Rights Watch
The impact of Nixon’s racist drug war was devastating, especially among Black men.
In 2010, the editorial board of The Baltimore Sun (2012) noted,
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services…found that 9.1 percent of whites and 10.7 percent of blacks had used illegal drugs within the previous month. But even though the differences in drug use between the two groups was statistically small, black Baltimore residents were arrested at more than three and a half times the rate of whites for drug offenses, and the disparities continued through their encounters with the criminal justice system.
Even a decade ago, the “war on drugs” was recognized as a disaster. In the article, “War on Drugs is a public policy failure,” Serot and Owsley wrote that “there are three ways to receive a sentence of life without parole in Missouri: rape of a child, deliberate (first degree) murder, and persistent drug convictions” (2011, par. 17).
Even though Missouri has legalized recreational use of marijuana in 2022, generations of Black men have been incarcerated, pulled out of their neighborhoods and their families, and the damage this has done is almost immeasurable.
Alexander found that,
More African American adults are under correctional control today - in prison or jail, or probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War…the absence of black fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time spent watching Sports Center. Thousands of black men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites (2020, p. 224).
Read more about the results of the war on drugs in St. Louis and the new marijuana laws in Johnny Prusak’s award-winning essay “Effects of Marijuana Legalization on the St. Louis Community.” Johnny was a student in Dr. Brizee’s English 3859 writing center course, and his essay won the 2023 Spaulding Literary Essay Award at the 3000-level.