posted November 28, 2007 01:23 PM
America's "War on Drugs"The war on drugs is the most fascinating subject I have ever encountered. The drug war is two degrees from almost everything. It dictates most of our international policy and all of our domestic policy. Let me also say my argument is not about drug use per se; my argument is about a sound, logical, reasonable approach to the overall drug war. What a person chooses to put in their body is another argument entirely. This drug war affects almost all aspects of our lives and most people cannot even see it or choose not to see it.
In economic terms, our policy of drug prohibition has made Illegal drugs worth more than gold. In health terms, we have seen AIDS and hepatitis “c” spread through needle sharing, homosexual and heterosexual acts. Our educational system has perpetuated this lie to unprecedented proportions under the guise of protecting our children, white children for the most part. Despite the billions spent to prevent it, there is not a person in this country that doesn’t know someone affected by illegal drugs.
The authorities try to keep it out of sight by saying things like “drugs are bad, drugs cause crime and our children are at risk”. The truth is that drugs cause crime like forks cause obesity.
The war on drugs is America’s cash cow. Paraphrasing from a poem written in the 1930’s about alcohol prohibition, “ prohibition doesn’t prohibit worth a dime, it’s filled with graft and crime, yet we seem to like it.” This is also true of drug prohibition. The strategy of drug prohibition creates the very problem that it claims to solve. The entire strategy is a hoax with the same effect as an air force, which bombs its own cities instead of its enemies. The drug war has absolutely nothing to do with drugs, it’s about power, control, coercion, and it’s about money -- plain and simple.
What can be done about it? Why are most people afraid to talk about it in the manner that it should be addressed? Are we incompetent, outright cowards or both?
The Federal Government's Household Survey on Drug Abuse is the most common set of statistics on the use of illegal drugs. According to the latest surveys, conducted by the DEA, there are about 12.7 million people who have used an illegal drug in the past month, and about 30 - 40 million people who have used an illegal drug in the past year. Among the 12.7 million people who have used an illegal drug in the past month, about 10 million are casual drug users and about 2.7 million are drug addicts. The figures produced by the Household Survey on Drug Abuse are obtained over the phone. Therefore, they do not include those without phones and what about those who didn't answer their phones, refused to participate, or answered the question dishonestly? Other surveys put the figures at least twice as high. Illegal drug use is relatively equal across socio economic boundaries. Most of the people surveyed are white according to the Household Survey.
There is a huge race and class discrepancy in enforcement, arrest and incarceration for drug law violations. The drug war is well on its way to re-instituting the legal status that black Americans were saddled with in the dark days of the nation’s past, that of non persons. It is a tragic devolution, embarked upon in the name of protecting America’s (mostly) white children. But the truth is that we will never arrest enough black kids to scare kids away from drugs. Because if there were one in three white male youths in the “system" or if 13 percent of the white population were ineligible to vote, there would be armed insurrection in the street.
The drug war is definitely a race and class issue when it comes to legislation, enforcement and incarceration. In the 1930’s, Harry Anslinger (a rabid drug policy maker) office said Mexicans and Negroes would look to rape women once intoxicated with marijuana. Later, the crack cocaine hysteria, which was viewed as a black problem, produced mandatory minimum drug laws during the mid to late 1980’s. Tip O’Neill was speaker of the house and an avid fan of the Boston Celtics, as were many in bean-town. Boston had ruled professional basketball for many years, but was about to enter a period of decline. Boston had drafted Len Bias, a young and gifted black. An individual of his caliber comes along once in a lifetime. This would help prolong the careers of white ballplayers Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, who were great ball players in their own right. Unfortunately, Bias died of a cocaine poisoning/overdose just before the season started. This sent Tip O’Neill into a frenzy to enact legislation to stop the use of crack. This was the catalyst for mandatory minimums. Race and class played out here also but few people recognize this as being such.
Race and class played and is still playing a dominant role in legislation of laws, enforcement, arrest and incarceration or at least that is what all the history, statistics and percentages point too.
Consider this; Connecticut has a population of 3.3 million people. Black and Latino males make up less than six percent of the population. The prison population as of 2003 was a little over twenty two thousand and almost sixty eight percent was black and Latino males. Almost seventy percent of these prisoners are there for drug related charges. These percentages are pretty constant in state after state. Is race and class the driving force behind the enforcement of our drug laws and if not how do we prove that to skeptics?
Dan Baum, in his book, “Smoke and Mirrors” it demonstrates how the race/class issue is most certainly the driving force in drug policy. In the diary of H.R. Haldeman, one of Nixon’s key advisors, Nixon is quoted as saying, “You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to”. Then, on January 17th 1971 Nixon declared the war on drugs.
Although nearly five times as many Whites use Illegal drugs on average as African Americans, nearly twice the number of Black men and woman are being put behind bars for drug offenses. Among the charges made by Human Rights Watch in a study released in 2001 is that the U.S. war on drugs has been waged overwhelmingly against Black Americans. In a report titled “Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs,” Human Rights watch conducted a 37 state study of the role of race and drugs in convictions.
All states that provided data were found to incarcerate African Americans at a far higher rate than whites. As American prisons approach a population of 2.3 million inmates, the highest in the world, many citizens are asking if justice is really served by locking up so many non-violent drug offenders, disproportionately from communities of color.
Nationwide, Black men are sent to prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of White men. But in at least 15 states, black men are sent to prison at rates that go from 20 to 57 times the rate of white men. The federal government’s own data shows there are twice as many whites using cocaine, both crack and powdered, than blacks.
I feel very comfortable saying that when you have a social policy directed at a minority, a political minority that doesn’t have the clout to force change in the political arena just by virtue of their numbers, blacks are only 12 percent of the population, then race and class is clearly playing a role. This is also compounded by economic and political factors.
On another note worth considering on race/class lines is the O. J. Simpson trail. Anyone that said the verdict did not break down on racial and class lines are not of this planet. .
The complexity of the issue causes people to misidentify the cause of the problem as drugs, when it is truly the drug war that is the problem. Hence, earlier legislation on Illegal drugs was accepted, though overt and callous and passed with blatant racial overtones. The 1980’s legislation was stealthy and coded with the approval of blacks that were in the legislature because of shallow understanding from people of good will, which is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Because of the type of legislation in the last century the war on drugs is now the major legal mechanism for maintaining white privilege and stigmatizing people of color, especially blacks. Its effects have replaced legal segregation as the legal and social mechanism to maintain white privilege, yet most blacks can’t see it or those blacks in power don’t want to see it. Racism takes the form of fear with many White people. They are not going to look at this issue because it maintains their white privilege and the illusion of protection. In their class and place, they don’t see themselves as racist because they were taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of their group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on a group from birth. The risk of offending those living in profound ignorance by establishing that they are ignorant and that their belief system is built on false assumptions is not really a risk at all; it's an essential first step.
The idea that we can tear down a metaphoric wall (drug prohibition, racism and classism) “one brick at a time” is very attractive; but nevertheless a delusion; when we agree with the “drugs are evil” premise upon which the false notion of prohibition is built, we agree with and implicitly strengthen our opponents’ message. The drug war is predicated on several errors and those predicates not only can’t be examined under present rules; they have never been examined historically. The total number of aggregate years of prison time served since 1937 for cannabis alone equals twenty million man-years.
Gallup conducted one of the most expansive polls ever on race a couple of years ago. One can only deduce that white America is in a state of mass delusion. This poll stated that only six percent of white America viewed racism as still being a very serious problem. While larger percentages viewed racism to be somewhat of a problem, only this small share viewed it as a prominent issue.
But when twice that number or as many as twelve percent said that Elvis Presley is still alive, then what can be said about the perception of white America. When one looks back to 1963 before civil rights legislation when racial discrimination was most blatant, sixty percent of whites said blacks were treated equally in their communities. More evidence indicates mass delusion with the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision in 1954 that outlawed segregation in the nation’s schools, but in 1962 eighty four percent of whites were convinced that Blacks had equal educational opportunity. This was well before schools actually moved to integrate their schools.
When looking at racial profiling -- a clear example of biased treatment -- a slim majority of Whites admit this does happen but few say it happens in their communities. Yet in state after state, a study done by “Human Rights Watch” states that Blacks face arrest rates for drug law violations that are five, ten, even fifty times higher than the rates for Whites despite roughly equal rates of illegal drug usage.
The facts don’t seem to matter because Whites tend to ignore them. Perhaps that’s why 12 percent of Whites say Blacks are the majority of the nation’s population and why many Whites say Blacks are a third of this nation’s population instead of the 12 percent they actually represent. People of any color hate to admit they are incorrect and continue coming up with unrealistic beliefs based on confused perceptions.
As long as we live in pockets of isolation we conjure up our own perceptions, these perceptions become our realities but are not necessarily the truth.
In one recent poll, 75 percent of whites said they have multiple close black friends. Now this gives the impression we are on the road to racial harmony until you realize that 75 percent represents 145 million people who say they have multiple close black friends, despite the fact that there only 35 million blacks in this country. Realizing all of this from a black perspective and whites looking to right wrongs of the past and present, whites are still reluctant to validate black issues. So we are talking past each other, clinging desperately to our half-truths. We all are morally exhausted, while white America can’t face the fact that racism is alive and well and Black America in many cases in leader-ship roles are the gatekeepers of racism.
In New York City, from 1997-1998, the NYPD’s street crime unit stopped and frisked 135,000 people, 85 percent of who were people of color. Only 4500 persons were ultimately arrested and prosecuted, meaning that over 95 percent of those harassed were innocent. Interestingly, Whites who were stopped were significantly more likely to be found with drugs or other contraband, indicating that not only was this policy of racial stops and searches a biased one but it failed the test as valid crime control on its own merits as well.
One of the key reasons for this disparity is the area where the police are doing drug law enforcement. Arrests are primarily made in minority neighborhoods where drug dealing is more public and therefore arrests are easier to make. Whites are selling drugs in their houses, country clubs, bars or clubs, or places of work, basically not on the street. Therefore, they are harder to arrest and are left alone.
The Black politicians surely know this but do not deal with it. Black leaders and politicians are a disgrace to themselves, the community they represent at large and must be called “uncle Toms”. This is not rocket science. Those that do have a clue want to address poverty, crime and education and can’t connect the dots that includes the drug war for fear of losing their jobs. Blacks and Whites alike have to realize that anyone who supports drug prohibition after decades of failure is directly responsible for its results.
The drug war has created a self-fulfilling prophecy. The stronger law enforcement becomes the worse the problem becomes and the more we expect the laws to work. And we as a people keep electing the same people who helped create this atrocity. Carl Sagan said, “if we have been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozled, we are no longer interested in finding the truth. The bamboozled has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we have been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. So the old bamboozled tend to persist as new ones arise”.
Do we, as black people deserve what has ensued during this insane drug war? Why do we accept and tolerate it?
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Insanity is allowing the same people at the table that created this mess.
Insanity is the belief that the above ground economy can compete with the underground economy when Illegal drugs are seven times more valuable than gold. Insanity is thinking that the war on drugs protects our children when they have unlimited access to these illegal drugs. Insanity is having more policemen in our communities who take away so many of our young and believing the community will somehow be better off. Blacks are as much of the problem as those who have enslaved us in the name of an unrealistic “drug free America”. And yes we deserve what has ensued.
Because Blacks are blinded by fear, they don’t ask the basic questions. All drug policy reform begins with this question, “Are people ever going to stop using Illegal drugs?” The overwhelmingly response is, “no.” The next question becomes, “How do we create a society that does the least amount of harm to the people that use and secondly the least amount of harm to society as a whole.” We are acting and looking like a dog chasing its tail, the dog never catches its tail and we will never come to grips with the problem using these tactics. The answer is not the war on drugs.
Those who are in the drug policy movement are always asking me, “Why aren’t Blacks up in arms over this issue and how can we get more Blacks in the movement?” My answer is that Black leaders, be they religious, political, or businessmen, are controlled by the White establishment for their monetary existence. In Cleveland, Ohio a year or so ago, a religious leader said to me, “The religious community is basically doing what the White establishment tells them to do and it is not to end the drug war.” She went on to say, “What we need is time to study this issue at length”. My question is, how much time does one need? We have had almost nine decades of drug prohibition and we have entered the fourth decade of the “war on drugs”. It continues to be the most destructive force since slavery and segregation.
Most minority organizations are tied in some way to local, state of federal funding and those government organizations that fund inner city organizations forbid discussion of drug reform. “Follow the party line or face potential loses of funding.” seems to be the rule.
The other question posed; is whether the drug policy reform movement is ready for an infusion of Blacks? I would have to say no. Even though we(drug policy reform movement which nine eighty percent white) believe we are ready for this, I truly have my reservations. Most people don’t realize that most of us are very ethnocentric. We tend to judge people by terms set by our own culture. If we want more blacks in the movement we have to first validate issues of minority concern such as: affirmative action; education; housing; reparations; and institutionalized racism. Reparations are an issue within the drug policy reform movement that reformers don’t want to address because of a feared backlash by the white populace. The idea of reparations is tied to slavery in America and has been shunned by most drug policy reformers. When I speak of reparations for the drug war that word becomes ambiguous at best.
“Human Rights Watch” traditionally advocates reparations as part of the remedy for any serious human rights abuse. For example, under traditional human rights law and policy, we expect governments that practice or tolerate racial discrimination to acknowledge and end this human rights violation and compensate the victims.
I envision reparations for the drug war as follows: taxes derived from the outright legalization of cannabis (indica, sativa, and ruderalus) should be put back into those areas hardest hit by the drug war. Those communities are overwhelmingly communities of color. All of America’s history and statistics point to this. These taxes could and should be spent on the rebuilding of the infrastructure devastated by the drug war. It should be administered for a period of time no longer than the drug war has been in place. The government could accomplish this or community boards could be set up through the democratic process to administer these monies. Legalization without indemnification is insufficient to me and does not address the wrong that has been committed along race and class lines.
Reformers scramble to find words other than “reparations.” This reminds me of two other words in American history that had the same impact. The first is “integration” when used in the civil rights movement and the second is “legalization” in the drug policy reform movement.
In my childhood, a gentleman visiting our house discussed integration. He explained that White and Black society of that time frame viewed this word as White women and Black men getting together and we should be talking about jobs, education and housing only. (Our house was a place where all sorts of issues were explored in great detail.) But, integration was the word to use. This was in the early to mid fifties and the person this gentleman was talking about at great length was Martin Luther King.
Legalization is a word that a lot of reformers have not embraced for a variety of
excuses. This word has reformers scrambling for other words like regulation and control. The first excuse is fear of rejection. The rest range from ill defined to an inappropriate message to our children. I have advocated legalization of cannabis the medicalization of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and ecstasy, and decriminalization of all other illegal drugs for future debate and medicinal study.
I believe that if you do not mean what you say and say what you mean, you are doomed to be at the disposal of your opponents. I witnessed in the army that if you don’t have a point man you and your company would eventually be destroyed. Legalization of drugs means to bring under legal control.
This is what Marc Cappatto, Member of the European Parliament and coordinator of Parliamentarians for Anti-prohibitions Action at the European Union said December 5th 2003. (Drug reformers in the U.S should heed the message.):
“American reformers need to understand that yes, the war on drugs is worse than the tolerant climate in Europe, but that tolerance came from left-wing governments and is not here to stay. Stopping at tolerance is short sighted. Without legalization of some sort, being tolerant eventually gives an opening to the political opposition to attack you as soft on drugs or soft on crime. If you don’t stand firm for legalization, sooner or later your are on the defensive. That is what is happening now in Italy, Holland and Spain.”
Legalization explored in depth is actually a highly conservative policy in that it seeks to tremendously limit the access that our children have to these illegal drugs. Also, it will tax a 499 billion-dollar under ground economy.
“Prohibition makes anything precious.” Mark Twain
There have been many horror stories about people addicted to drugs and how drugs have affected their lives. This is the self-fulfilling prophecy. Let me now give the story of a person who has been addicted to drugs but in a different way. The article further illustrates the plight of tens of thousands in Black America. This gentleman was first brought to my attention a few years ago where his writings were featured at a conference I spoke at in Canada. This is one of his writings. This is a compelling story and is also carried out by millions of America’s black, white and Latino youth.
This man has been truly robbed of developing an opportunity to develop his talent, a gift, which I believe has the potential to be great. These are his words, unedited.
INNER-CITY MAYHEM: THE LURES, CAUSES, AND EFFECTS OF INNER-CITY DRUG DEALING. EPIDEMIC? OR GOVERNMENTAL PLAN?
I was born Reginald Alexander; the inner-city streets christened me “Cash.” A nickname that in my younger, misguided years was flaunted and worn like a badge of honor, and one that stood testimonial to my reputation as a big money maker in the illegal drug trade. Now, years later and having been imprisoned for the past 2,603 days in a cold, drab cell, my street moniker is like an unwanted tattoo that covers my body and misrepresents my true character. One that hint of monetary success but belies the hard facts -- the many interconnected tragedies that dwell underneath.
Perhaps more accurately descriptive of my years in the drug trade -- even more than my moniker -- are the gunshot wounds that tatter by body, or the many surgical skin grafts that were necessary to repair these wounds. These are permanent reminders of near-brushes with instant death that occurred while chasing that elusive all-American dream to become rich. A dream delusionally pursued, and encouraged by the almost indescribable lures of drug dealing; fast money, faster women, and inner-city street fame!
Foolishly, like too many of my people before me and after, I once thought it glamorous to be a drug dealer. A macabre philosophy I estimate is shared by 75% of inner-city youths and the majority of all the inner city’s residents. An astronomical percentage, yes. But unerringly reflective of the social maladies that pervades urban America. Understand that in the inner city -- “the Hood” we call it -- the drug dealer is more prominent than the college graduate, or the long-tenured working man. The barometer is money, and ghetto fame; the means by which either is acquired matters none. In the ‘hood, it serves you better to be feared than respected, and the collective faith in any God is fast dwindling to no greater than a grown-up’s faith in Santa Claus. Money has become omnipotent in place of the Supreme Being we were once taught to worship.
City officials have put up fences around the low-income housing projects, with armed security stationed at entrance and exit points. They claim it was done to keep “undesirables” out. But my people know it was done to keep us all trapped in. Hope has bowed out to desperation and, in the mad scramble to rise above poverty, my people have fallen victim to the intoxicating lures of drug dealing. It offers the quickest reprieve from nothingness, though it has been repeatedly proven that such a lifestyle will end in an early, tragic death or a lifetime behind bars.
With a bleak and fatalistic ending virtually assured, why do so many still choose to become drug dealers? What exactly is the lure and causes? Ultimately, what are the unpropagandized effects of drug dealing in the inner city? Who all share in the blame? Illicit drugs have been prevalent throughout the inner city for as long anyone can remember. Drugs and crime seem to go hand-in-hand with poverty, misery, oppression, desperation, and despair. When cocaine -- particularly crack -- hit the city’s streets, in the early 80s, like a mid-winter snowstorm, sparing no neighborhoods or class of people, it wreaked irrevocable havoc on the ghettos across the nation. The ghetto’s inhabitants were easy prey for crack’s euphoric high, its temporary escape from oppression and, of course, its “get rich quick” potential. Not long after crack’s appearance on the scene, the inner city further deteriorated into an abysmal existence, as rival street gangs and dealers waged bloody war over the right to sell drugs on certain corners. Many young men lost their lives, and continue to die and kill over drug turf! Too many lost their freedom as a result of dealing drugs and succumbing to this insidious drug game, and today America’s prisons overflow with the convicted; victims and casualties of these tumultuous times.
Yet the lure remains strong, in part because the local drug dealer who has thus far prevailed, or guilefully evaded such catastrophe has temporarily benefited from the huge demand for crack. He has become the neighborhood star! And is often praised and emulated. His luxury cars, wads of money, and perceived independence is often envied. He seems to represent what few of my people can match; financial security, and a station beyond oppression. That is a large part of the lures.
Tragedy, and painfully acquired wisdom, have changed who I am and how I think; yet I can relate to the inner-city’s mindset and pulse because I’ve been there. My blood still stains the ground where I had lain, gunned down, crying, and praying to a God I’d abandoned. Begging Him to rescue me from the clutches of death and spare my children and wife the heartbreak of trying to survive in this unforgiving world without me.
Death did not claim me that night, but prison would a few years later. Make no mistake; prison is death too. Just very, very slow.
I must at this point say, while peer pressure and physical threats from local street gangs certainly share a small portion of the blame for luring some into dealing drugs, it is a vast media misconception that this takes place on a large scale. I suspect that the media is not thoroughly misled, rather it chooses to produce mass disinformation. Those who believe the media have little awareness of the true mechanisms that churn the wheels of inner-city illegal drug trade. Never forget that nothing motivates crime like prolonged poverty!
When discussing the lures and causes of drug dealing in the inner city, all discussions must start there! Webster’s Dictionary defines poverty as “lack of money or possessions.” Those of us born into poverty know that it is also a lack of hope!
Poverty breeds a feeling of inferiority that can suffocate a generation of people. Drug dealing misleadingly offers fast money and instantaneous elevation from a poverty-stricken existence. That bait -- to my people -- is like a hooked worm to a fish. I speak from first-hand experience, not presumption. Yet I often wish that wasn’t so. I’d not hesitate to trade my grave experiences for the return of my freedom. Eight years of physical imprisonment and an everyday struggle to avoid a systemic mental shackling.
In the illegal drug trade, it has been proven, time and time again, that early death, or prison, is imminent. Still, one drive through any ghetto in America will expose you to drug dealers on every other corner.
Why? Because poverty is imprisoning too. It chokes like a hangman’s noose! What would any of us not do to escape that fate?
The street creed dictates that the strong must feed, on any prey at hand. An unforgiving and dispassionate idealism, no doubt! Media disinformation campaigns accredit such idealism to my inner-city brethren. But “corporate America” ruthlessly practices the identical creed, in fact invented it.
Crack cocaine is a highly addictive drug; it has brought down politicians from lofty perches. It has turned mothers into five-dollar ****** , husbands into vagabonds. No one familiar with the drug can deny its addictiveness. Yet I seriously state that the addictiveness to using crack pales in comparison to the hot! addictiveness to dealing or selling the drug! I have first-hand knowledge of that type of addictiveness.
Once a person who once penniless, hopeless, insecure, and degraded has used drug dealing as his tool to overcome that multiple psychological oppression, he will go to all extremes to prevent his return to it. Any type of freedom is a hard thing to willingly surrender. My ancestors died fighting for freedom. Prisoners have been gunned down attempting to scale razor wire fences, trying to return to freedom. Wealthy businessmen have cheated their partners, and have sometimes killed to preserve their financial freedom. So, then, although illegal and moralistically wrong, it becomes clearer why many of my people, including myself, resorted to drug dealing as a means to prosperity and maintaining it.
I’ve witnessed many of my people say they’d rather die young than live a long life in poverty. That message is reflected in today’s music, which mirrors life. A New York rapper, DMX, says in a song: “Either let me fly or give me death / let my soul rest / take my breath / Cause if I can’t fly I’m gonna die anyway / Ain’t gonna’ be long, I’ll be gone any day.”
To “fly” is to be free. Poverty imprisons him, as does lyrical censorship, and he is saying he’s rather die than remain impoverished and throttled.
It is undeniable, the vast majority of fatalities and drug-related crimes are committed by the young, black, inner-city male. Because the system has made him the most susceptible. Go into any prison in America and you’ll find the inmate population is predominantly African American. A drastic disproportionate ratio to society-at-large. Among this disproportionate amount of incarcerated black men, you’ll find that an innumerable amount of them are imprisoned on drug-related offenses.
I suspect a not so unplanned phenomenon, which I explore in great detail in my full papers. It is my hope that you’ll be provided with the full text at some point. But let me continue on for a short while, then I’ll conclude.
From the slums of New York to the palatial estates in Hollywood, material possessions are more valued than moral virtues. This media and societal concept is what induced turned me, Reginald Alexander, a high school honor student who dreamed of becoming a journalist and a Pulitzer prize winner, into “Cash” the drug dealer.
The media, large companies, advertisers, manufacturers and small businesses are to blame for the continued widespread dealing of drugs. Consider that many companies such as NIKE, and designers such as Tommy Hilfinger, create a lucrative line of products and apparel, and market their ads directly for the inner-city youths. They do this despite the staggering prices of their products and the reality that the inner-city family has the lowest average income of any class of people in America. You can bet that marketing staff at NIKE and these other companies are well aware of the numbers. Yet they continue to make and market $180 sneakers, and their target customer is not mainstream America. So-called mainstream Americans realize that $180 for a pair of shoes for a kid who will quickly outgrow them or wear them out, is not a sound investment. These products are aimed at inner-city drug money and help to perpetuate the continuous inner-city drug phenomenon.
I challenge you to explain away the wrongness of the thousands of neighborhood pawnshop owners, used car salesmen and proprietors, and jewelry flea market operators who specifically cater to and exploit the drug dealer, and silently encourage him to continue an ill-fated life of crime. For their business’s success solely depends on the drug dealer’s illegal acumen. Why else are their display cases stuffed with gaudy gold necklaces and pendants, items made for and directed at drug dealers? Who else in the ghetto will purchase fist-sized gold replicas of a 357 magnum? Or wear wrist-thick gold chains around their neck, with a gold pendant replicating a scale used to measure out cocaine?
These supposedly honorable businessmen have set up shop in the inner-city areas where they prey on the weak -- me and my people! -- then at night escape back to the suburbs.
All of these predatory companies and businesses have collateral and a negative effect in the inner city, and continue to play a substantial, but unblamed, role in promoting the illegal drug trade. The collective effect on the inner city and its inhabitants is monstrous! It is what fertilizes and allows for the cycle of my people’s destruction to persist. Year after year. Tragedy after tragedy. Incarceration after incarceration. Death, pain, tears, regret, and on and on -- non-stop.!
The neighborhood that I’m from is not unlike any other poverty-ridden neighborhood in the US. It consists of worn-down houses, condemned buildings and lives. Rat and crime-infested projects, broken homes, shattered dreams, broken hearts and endless suffering. Delusion. Despair. Downright sociological misery. In every single home there’s someone who has lost a loved one to this drug war, this insidious scheme. The inner-city drug dealer has been portrayed as the most despicable of the human race. But don’t you believe that! We are mere pawns in a huge chess game, where the Super High devil creators and perpetrators of America’s illegal drug trade continue to remain anonymous. We pawns have been sacrificed by the Kings!
A misinformed outsider may suggest that an easy alternative to poverty is to go to college and earn a degree, to improve our legitimate earning potential. To these I say: the trap is set long before we are the age to attend college. Then, too, try to comprehend that at no point in his or her life has the inner-city person been intimately exposed to a blueprint for legitimate success. While the “powers that be” make certain we are exposed to a drug dealer on every corner. Hence the fence around the projects.
Swallow this: I don’t even know one college graduate -- not personally!
At birth I was blessed with a mental faculty to house an impressive intellect, but in my ‘hood it was useless -- a non-commodity! No one advised me as to how to use it. So the ‘hood beat my intellect into drug-dealing guile, then prison snatched me into its unrelenting vise.
Now what do I have? The inner city has changed my given name from Reginald to Cash. Prison erased both my street name and my moniker, and replace them with a number. I am now inmate number 292215! The decimation of my name and of my existence is sad. Even sadder is that there are thousands and thousands of stories like mine. Some have said there are no words to describe the collective, well-disguised extermination of my people. I say there are too many words to describe it! I was allotted this time, at this forum, to try and personalize my story -- my people’s predicament. I’ve ventured, and I’ve tried, to scream out to you with my pen. My words are in behalf of myself and all others convicted of drug offenses and related crimes. I also speak for my brothers and sisters who are silenced, but not forgotten, in their graves.
As I conclude this message, this article of truth, I can feel the sting of tears pushing at the corner of my eyes. But I refuse to let them flow. I feel lost in coming up with a cure-all answer to my people’s problems -- our fight against this unseen, undisclosed juggernaut. But I do know that the answer is not tears. For like intelligence, compassion without direction is useless in this war.
By Reginald Alexander
EF 292215
Georgia State Prison
Reidsville, GA 30499
P.S. The Parole Board recently denied my parole and won’t reconsider again until 2007!
A colleague of mine, Mike Gray, wrote a book entitled “Drug Crazy”. His account talks about many adventures of the police and drug dealers. The following is an excerpt describing the money that is made in most cities of America. This excerpt takes place in the south side of Chicago with police and a drug dealer’s car.
“He checks the driver’s side in front and spots a slight bulge in the carpet next to the rocker panel. It’s a floor-mounted switch. Goff clicks it with his foot and the back of the rear seat falls forward. And there it is---bagged and ready for sale---seventeen pounds of powder cocaine, Along with bundles of cash. Tens and twenties mostly. It takes a quarter of an hour to count it. It totals $53,000.
Goff is impressed. “The day’s receipts,” he says. And a glance at De-De’s ledger bears him out. The account book they found with the dope gives a glimpse of the incredible scale of the problem facing Frank Goff and his colleagues. In the first ten days of March, this mid-level deliveryman for the Gangster Disciples took in $451,000.”
This is the main reason along with the crime that ensues with drug prohibition is that economic investment in the inner city is so infrequent. Legitimate economic investment can never be more profitable than prohibition induced drug trafficking or cultivation. Hence, and the alternatives to this problem have to be as far-reaching and pervasive as the problem itself.
One might think, after reading the story and excerpt, that the authorities are making progress in eliminating drugs and drug dealers. But, with this type of cash to be made there, police accomplish only one thing. They have created is a job vacancy. Actually, law enforcement is doing the job of rival drug dealers, in that they have eliminated a powerful (force) dealer, therefore creating a vacuum that will be filled by another drug dealer immediately – and violently.
One must understand what happens with drug sweeps and arrests of drug dealers. In my birthplace of Hartford, Connecticut, drug sweeps and arrests have been going on forever, as takes place all over the country. This is another aspect of that self-fulfilling prophecy. State and local police have joined forces to rid the city of known drug dealers and arrest people with outstanding warrants. The authorities are very good at this and get most of these people. Reformers have been saying that they will succeed in this endeavor but what will ensue will be a record number of shooting and killings vying for drug selling turf. This always happens, but no one is accountable. This type of thinking and the people who administer such projects have to go. The authorities are part of the problem and can’t see it or don’t want too.
There are programs within the drug policy reform movement to address and educate minorities on the many issues of the war on drugs, which include the affects, the outcomes, and what can be done for communities of color. One of them is a forum called “Breaking the Chains” which tours the country. There have been two at this writing conducted in predominately communities of color. More are planned and seem to be well received in these areas. However, the program does not explore alternatives in depth such as legalization, medicalization and decriminalization. I have explored and explained the reasons for legalization earlier in this essay.
In summation, drug prohibition has been going on for almost nine decades, yet the are more illegal drugs at cheaper prices on the streets of America that ever before. There are six and half million people in our criminal justice system that are either on parole, probation, prison, jail, or half way houses. Almost two thirds of them are young black or Latino males. Almost seventy percent are there for drug related charges. Ten percent of the African American population is in the criminal justice system. We have spent almost a trillion dollars and are no closer to coming to grips with this problem, never mind solving it, than when prohibition started.
Economically we cannot continue with the drug war. Every state in America, except two, is in a budget crisis. At the core of this budgetary crisis are mandatory minimum drug sentencing, prison building, and law enforcement budgets.
Many of these drug offenders will be released in the coming months. Society has not prepared for their release. These prisoners are for the most part not skilled to compete in today’s legitimate society, which means there are not enough jobs or training programs for these former inmates.
Their families can measure humanitarian costs with the people in our criminal justice system, loss of taxes in the respective communities, which lead to cuts in social programs, the inability to participate in civic life. Many of these prisoners can no longer vote. There are unending consequences that prevail with felons and eventually affect the community at large. This is the end product of that self-fulfilling prophecy.
We are just about at the end of the road. Until we decide to remove the profit motive and the race/class and white privilege issue from drug prohibition it will only get worse. Wake up America. Legalization, medicalization, decriminalization now, legalization, medicalization, decriminalization tomorrow, legalization medicalization, decriminalization forever.
http://whiteprivilege.hampshire.edu/files/Race_Class_War_on_Drugs.doc.
Lindaland
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