NAACP Resolution on the Drug War
Good:
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) passed a resolution Tuesday calling for an end to the “War on Drugs” during their 102tn NAACP Annual Convention in Los Angeles, CA.
“Today the NAACP has taken a major step towards equity, justice and effective law enforcement,” said NAACP president and CEO Benjamin Jealous. “These flawed drug policies that have been mostly enforced in African American communities must be stopped and replaced with evidenced-based practices that address the root causes of drug use and abuse in America.”
The resolution, titled “A Call to End the War on Drugs, Allocate Funding to Investigate Substance Abuse Treatment, Education, and Opportunities in Communities of Color for A Better Tomorrow” highlighted the fact that the United States spends $40 billion each year fighting the drug war and that African-Americans are 13 times more likely to end up in jail for drug-related crimes than their white counterparts.
“Studies show that all racial groups abuse drugs at similar rates, but the numbers also show that African Americans, Hispanics and other people of color are stopped, searched, arrested, charged, convicted, and sent to prison for drug-related charges at a much higher rate,” said Alice Huffman, president of the California State Conference of the NAACP. “This dual system of drug law enforcement that serves to keep African-Americans and other minorities under lock and key and in prison must be exposed and eradicated.”
I appreciate the sentiment behind this, and largely agree with it, but I am undecided as to whether or not this is actually helpful to the cause. On the one hand, they’re not an unimportant group. They can draw attention to it. On the other hand, they’re a group that a good portion of “middle America” doesn’t hold in very high regard.Report
What do people think
evidenced-based practices that address the root causes of drug use and abuse in America.
means? It sheds little light for me.Report
Well, the flip side of “evidence-based” would be “faith-based”, if I’m not mistaken…
I mean, I know that *I* would say that Prohibition is a faith-based initiative but I’d be surprised to hear normal people say such a thing.
I don’t know what they’d mean if they don’t mean that, though.Report
It means that evidence, rather than bullshit or inertia or myths or old political scores or politics or any number of other things, ought to drive or influence policy. What’s so hard to understand about that?Report
So we should live in the real world and do sensible things. Cool. What are they?Report
I think it’s a yet to be determined situation, Mike. Those policies emerge only after comparing the onstensible goals of the war on drug against current data and historical trends wrt how effective policy is in achieving them, Insofar as the data doesn’t align with the ostensible goals, the evidence would suggest rejecting current policy in favor of policies that achieve those goals.
My guess is that the NAACP has a particular set of data they will deem particularly relevant here.
Maybe I’m not understanding the question.Report
I’m in the same boat as you. I don’t quite understand the question. It seems to me just a professional-sounding way of saying “we have evidence on our side” to [what they later announce they want to do, probably involving treatment and no jail time for drug offenders, but that’s just a guess.].Report
That’s what I’m asking — while it’s impossible to argue against ending the drug war, I’d like to know what they suggest replacing it with.Report
“Put out the fire.”
“But what do we replace it with?”Report
I’m not finding much on what was said by whom during the crack epidemic, which defined the current state of affairs. It does appear that the 1986 law was pushed through by Tip O’Neill and Ted Kennedy after the Celtics lost their star forward Len Bias to a cocaine-related heart attack.
[Reagan of course gets the blame.]
[It was never known what kind of cocaine Bias was consuming. It was assumed by all involved it was crack; he was black afterall.]
[The bill passed the Dem senate and GOP House with few votes against either way.]
[I do remember the crack epidemic up close & personal. Very bad.]Report
[It was assumed by me that it was powder cocaine.]Report
I’d say this is a potentially huge development. Within the Democratic party the African American community is one important constituency that has reflexively been in favor of the War on Drugs. I’m not sure what middle America may think of the NAACP but it should have nontrivial effects on the attitudes of African Americans and hopefully represents a loosening of one of the realpolitic ties that keeps the Democratic party from opposing the WoD actively.Report
In my understanding, the black community has supported the WoD (or probably more accurately, simply been anti-drug) because many of their communities have felt the hardest hit by the drug culture, from the rates of use/abuse/dependency to the numbers of folks who end up in the prison system as a result of their involvement. As I’ve heard it articulated, a commonly held belief in the black community (particularly those in poor, urban environments) is, “I’ve seen firsthand how damaging this stuff is. It needs to be stopped.” When I’ve probed further, most are more focused on ridding their communities of the drugs than they are of punishing folks, particularly users (which is why I made the distinction in my opening sentence). I think this is a potentially huge step by the NAACP, not only because of their influence in the black community, but because of what I anticipate being a perception of a unique stand that they take.
Accurate or not, many assume those who oppose the WoD are druggies themselves who think drugs are harmless and want everyone to do drugs. I anticipate the NAACP, as evidenced by the cited statement above about “evidence-based practices”, will take a stand that drug use should still be resisted and prevention sought, but through means outside the criminal justice system. Obviously, they will not be the first or only group to take this stand. But they might draw new and more attention to this line of thinking because the NAACP specifically and black community in generally have and will continue to be anti-drug but now also anti-WoD.
Perhaps I am being overly optimistic, but we need that every once in a while, no?Report
I think I agree w/you, BSK. Hard to tell lately.
As I’ve heard it articulated, a commonly held belief in the black community (particularly those in poor, urban environments) is, “I’ve seen firsthand how damaging this stuff is. It needs to be stopped.”
Passive voice? As opposed to “We need to stop it.”
drug use should still be resisted and prevention sought
Massive passive voice. Honestly, it would never occur to me to, or how to, compose such a sentence.
The crack epidemic sucked bigtime, circa 1985-92. White folk were at worst marginally inconvenienced.
but through means outside the criminal justice system
Uh huh. I will say out of fairness, thinking on it, that mebbe crack has found a level of social unacceptability in the black community—-and we are talking about the black community, NAACP and all—crack babies, crack whores, crackheads as an object of derision.
[Shows you what a little social pressure can do.]
Mebbe we could, but I have no idea what would or will happen if we legalize or even just decriminalize crack. I did some reading today because I actually give a shit, poking back through the memory hole—Before the Crack Epidemic, powder cocaine sold for $60 a gram and you mostly had to buy a gram. By contrast, one rock of crack sold for $2 or so, so your next hit was a shoplift away.
I’m sorry, I’m getting into details and shit. But I saw some of this go down Ground Zero LA, the mission district, and the people who had to live with it saw it max.
Caught Robin Williams in a comedy club back in the day and he said cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you have too much money. True fact, white boy. But crack says you will never ever have enough.
White boys of a certain almost-adult age can smoke crack, I guess, if they have family to leach off. The black community, not so much. That’s what I saw in the mission district. And if a white 20-ish yr old got busted, he had a support system to fall back on. The guys I saw lining the mission district, well, clearly no.
I’m not dense about this, nor do I have the answers.
Crack isn’t pot or booze. This I know for sure. It destroys immediately. Plowing all this indiscriminately into some ideological war against the War on Drugs is, well, ideology.
[Heh heh. I just used “ideology” pejoratively. Did I use it correctly?]Report
NB: I regret appending “heh heh” to my last. It was intended as self-deprecation. I’m sincere about the content and am thoroughly troubled by this conundrum.Report
Tom, I would like to note for the record that the horrors of crack are generally one of the many bastard children of the War on Drugs. Crack was developed as a low cost variant of cocaine. The prices of cocaine (and other milder drugs) were high due to the War on Drugs. Without the cost pressures of the War on Drugs cocaine would have been far less expensive and the pressures and dynamics from which crack was created would be either nonexistent or greatly reduced.Report