America's Racist Drug Policy

The War on Blacks through the "War On Drugs" continues. For over a decade, Blacks have long discussed the fallacy of this government's "anti-drug" efforts. You can hardly have a discussion on crime and drugs anywhere in the Black community without having the topic of the unfair treatment and punishment that Blacks receive, at the hands of this country's criminal justice system, brought up.

From the peculiar nature by which crack exploded in the Black community to the more recent explosion in the use of marijuana, Blacks, in general, have found the entire affair to be suspicious. Then when you throw in the discrepancy in sentencing for those caught with crack and those found with powder cocaine, the racial implications of US drug policy become more obvious.

The bifurcation that the criminal justice system makes between punishment and penalties for drugs popular among poor Blacks and those among more wealthy Whites is glaring.

Now, we have entered the latest chapter in this saga with the separate treatment that methamphetamine, a drug more popular among minority users, receives juxtaposed to the drug ecstasy -- a drug much more popular among white users.

Syndicate columnist Arianna Huffington has penned a recent piece on how the government's mandatory minimum sentencing policies are discriminating against non-whites.

The article is a must-read and addresses just one more subject that vice-President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush are ignoring.

Here is the story.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9871

Cedric Muhammad

Thursday, October 5, 2000