The War on Drugs: Inequality in Incarceration

★ by Tallulah Frigo ★
edited by Sarah Kadous / graphic by Coco Lashar

“Instead of war on poverty, they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.”
— Tupac Shakur

Calls of "no justice, no peace" have been echoing throughout the city of Minneapolis since the murder of George Floyd on May 26. Another Black man killed at the hands of a White police officer. Yet again, America is in mourning: mourning for Floyd, for his loved ones, combined with the shattering revelation that racism is alive and well in America in 2020.

Protests have erupted, and rightfully so, as people from all backgrounds express their grief, anger, and fear. These protests are a culmination of global anger across all media platforms, as the criminalization of Black victims of racially motivated violence grows, revealing the tragic reality of living as a Black person in modern America.

The systematic killing of Black Americans is an ongoing truth that the United States must acknowledge and challenge every single day. This criminalization is predominantly credited to the damaging policing of drug use and suspected possession in Black communities, traced back to the Nixon Administration’s War on Drugs in 1971.

Since the mid-1980s, the United States has pursued aggressive racially motivated law enforcement strategies to curtail the use of illegal drugs across the country. The costs and benefits of this nationwide “war on drugs,” an effort doubled down by President Reagan in 1982, is still fiercely debated.

In 1984, Nancy Reagan pioneered the drug abuse prevention campaign, “Just Say No,” under her husband’s presidency. Simultaneously, President Reagan refocused on drugs by passing severe penalties for drug-related crimes in Congress and state legislatures. This led to a massive increase in incarcerations for nonviolent drug crimes. In fact, according to The Sentencing Project, incarceration has increased more than 500 percent in the past 40 years, with a direct correlation to the agenda of the War on Drugs. 

Two years later, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established and expanded mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain drug offenses. This law was criticized for having racist implications in its policing of inner cities and its means of incarceration for cocaine. The drug war produced profoundly unequal outcomes across racial groups, substantiated by racial discrimination by law enforcement and disproportionate incarceration. Most unfairly affected, and still affected, are Black Americans: arrested, convicted, and imprisoned at a higher rate than their White counterparts.

“In the federal system, Black Americans charged with a drug offence serve an average nearly the same amount of time (58.7 months) as a White American charged with violent crime (61.7 months)”

The racial disparities are not minor, by any means. Black Americans are four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana charges than their White peers. Black Americans make up nearly 30 percent of all drug-related arrests each year, despite only accounting for 12.5 percent of substance abuse, according to the Human Rights Watch. As a result, people of color make up 60 percent of the prison population serving time for drug offences. These disparities infiltrate sentencing, too. In the federal system, Black Americans charged with a drug offence serve an average nearly the same amount of time (58.7 months) as a White American charged with violent crime (61.7 months). Black Americans are subject to systemic biases at every point in the criminal justice system, experiences that are a severely damaging reality.

The War on Drugs has brought with it controversial legislation and tactics, including mandatory minimum penalties and stop-and-frisk searches. In addition to the legalities, this war could not be sustained without societal racism and manipulation of racial stereotypes. Throughout the 20th century, notions of low self-control, immorality, and racism became linked to society’s understanding of drug use and minority communities. With this came a stark distinction between lawful drug use in White communities and illicit drug use in Black communities. This distinction creates fixed perceptions of Black Americans as irresponsible, harmful drug users. American media, society, and public officials embrace these representations, impacting the perception of drug users, and the drugs affiliated criminalization and policing. The collateral effects of these disparities create structural violence and oppression for Black communities, compounding damage with ripple effects.

The racialized drug crackdown was at its peak in the late 1900s century, where 50 percent of drug possession arrests were Black Americans, and that impact is still felt today. Countless Black families were harmed, and a cycle of fewer opportunities began. While many young Black men continue to spend their lives in prison on minor drug charges, comparatively, the White community is not affected; The percentage of Black Americans serving life sentences is over 60 percent in the federal system, compared to their white counterparts. According to the ACLU, sentences imposed on Black men in the federal system are on average nearly 20 times longer than those imposed on White men convicted of similar crimes.

“Years of discourse has led drug use to be falsely associated with a particular type of person, consuming drugs in particular locations and particular ways.”

While allies cannot begin to understand the systematic and consistent roots of the Black struggle, they can educate themselves about the structural and institutionalized motivations of their oppression. 

The mutually beneficial partnership between the media, society, and criminal justice policy allows the criminal justice system to justify its aims and objectives. This creates a sense of effective policing through high arrest and incarceration rates, but this result-driven action leads to racialized, gendered responses. Years of discourse has led drug use to be falsely associated with a particular type of person, consuming drugs in particular locations and particular ways — leading to damaging research and assumptions, like the incredulous idea that genetics predispose Black Americans to dangerous drug use.

Injustice is not rooted in any internal problem within Black communities, but rather in the problematic criminal justice system and its unjust punishments. The War on Drugs was designed specifically for this purpose. These higher arrest and incarceration rates are not reflective of an increased prevalence of drug use or sales, but rather law enforcement’s focus on urban areas, lower-income communities, and communities of color.

“Injustice is not rooted in any internal problem within Black communities, but rather in the problematic criminal justice system and its unjust punishments.”

Public officials are relatively untroubled by these issues and the disproportionate arrest and punishment of Black people for drug offences. Their indifference — and that of the wider public — reflects conscious and unconscious racial biases woven into the fabric of American anti-drug efforts.For the past eight decades, this pattern has ingrained itself in the American identity,  explaining the broken bridge between law enforcement and Black Americans. The system does not work the same for everyone, and this war on Black communities must end. If not, there will be no break in the harmful cycle. Until then, we must take to the streets and show those in power that this racism will no longer go unnoticed.