Earlier this year, I wrote that the war on drugs has had an unequivocally detrimental effect on our cities. I mentioned stop-and-frisk police tactics and how they are applied to people of color in the cities in a discriminatory manner. To my knowledge, no such policing tactic exist is in the suburbs-anywhere.
In Part I last week, I included The New York Times editorial published in June 2012, which highlighted this imbalance of enforcement of drug laws in the cities but nowhere else. Logically, one might hypothesize this tactic is used to arrest hardened, violent criminals. But that could not be farther from the truth. In New York State, possession of a small amount of marijuana was reduced in seriousness to simply a violation that is similar to a speeding or traffic ticket. In fact, for the last 35 years, it has been downgraded to only a violation of the law. Yet in New York City in 1990 - 13 years after the penalty reduction went into law. This law enforcement crackdown is not found anywhere else in the suburbs of New York State. This is why it is a direct attack on the inner-city population, as is the stop-and-frisk program.
In addition to my message that we have discriminatorily declared war on our cities, this article also communicates that it is acceptable for police to stop and frisk 700,000 citizens and arrest 50,000 for possession of a small amount of marijuana. But despite this extensive and intensive drug enforcement tactic, America has been made unable to declare victory on its declared war on drugs. We've lost the war because it was always unwinnable. This is after increasing arrests for dangerous drug in the drug "crisis' - from 1,000 in 1990 to 50,000 in 2011.
The question is If that's the result of our war on drugs scorecard with regards to an "introductory" drug like marijuana, then how successful has the war on drugs been with substances like heroin, methamphetamine or prescription pain medications or alcohol or...?
This increase from 1,000 to 50,000 arrests for marijuana possession during a 21-year span raises many more questions, not the least of which are: what has been accomplished, what was the original intent of the war on drugs, an finally, what was the point of it all? And didn't anyone in law enforcement or public office in New York City analyze this illogical statistic?? Have they done so now? Will continue happen every year?
In Part I last week, I included The New York Times editorial published in June 2012, which highlighted this imbalance of enforcement of drug laws in the cities but nowhere else. Logically, one might hypothesize this tactic is used to arrest hardened, violent criminals. But that could not be farther from the truth. In New York State, possession of a small amount of marijuana was reduced in seriousness to simply a violation that is similar to a speeding or traffic ticket. In fact, for the last 35 years, it has been downgraded to only a violation of the law. Yet in New York City in 1990 - 13 years after the penalty reduction went into law. This law enforcement crackdown is not found anywhere else in the suburbs of New York State. This is why it is a direct attack on the inner-city population, as is the stop-and-frisk program.
In addition to my message that we have discriminatorily declared war on our cities, this article also communicates that it is acceptable for police to stop and frisk 700,000 citizens and arrest 50,000 for possession of a small amount of marijuana. But despite this extensive and intensive drug enforcement tactic, America has been made unable to declare victory on its declared war on drugs. We've lost the war because it was always unwinnable. This is after increasing arrests for dangerous drug in the drug "crisis' - from 1,000 in 1990 to 50,000 in 2011.
The question is If that's the result of our war on drugs scorecard with regards to an "introductory" drug like marijuana, then how successful has the war on drugs been with substances like heroin, methamphetamine or prescription pain medications or alcohol or...?
This increase from 1,000 to 50,000 arrests for marijuana possession during a 21-year span raises many more questions, not the least of which are: what has been accomplished, what was the original intent of the war on drugs, an finally, what was the point of it all? And didn't anyone in law enforcement or public office in New York City analyze this illogical statistic?? Have they done so now? Will continue happen every year?
Our War On Drugs Have Failed
Among the many understood facts that led only to this conclusion is the astronomical rise in costs in the United States to incarcerate 12 times the number of inmates in 40 years from when president Nixon declared a war on drugs in 1971. The Reading Eagle's front-page report on March 9, 2014 titled 'The Heartache of Heroin' quotes the special agent in charges of the state's Bureau of Narcotics Investigation and Drug Control that "heroin use has reached the entire state [of Pennsylvania]", It used to be found only in "pockets" throughout the state. The gist of the article revealed that in three years the number of deaths from heroin use increased in Pennsylvania by 149% from 332 in 2000 to 827 in 2012. On page 54 of my book Justice or Just This?: A Constitutional Trespass, published in late 2011, I posed the question: Is this the best policy to declare war on drugs when alcohol and tobacco use are far more damaging to society? In fact, legal prescription drugs send more people to the emergency room than the illegal drugs we are spending billions to fight!
How was America benefited from its current 43 year old war on drugs? Equally important is the question of how has our country suffered because of it? Drug use is the same regardless of race, yet three times more blacks are in jail for it than whites. It fact, we can summarize in general, that disproportionately more blacks and Hispanics are in prison, while fewer whites are behind bars for other crimes as well.
Why is that? Is it because the authorities that make and enforce the criminal drug laws prioritize arrests in cities but not in the suburbs? We do know that when blacks fled the south for the north in the 1960s, many relocated in the ghettos of the cities. Does this statistic have anything to do with why we are fighting the drug was in our cities?
Conclusion
Are we discriminatorily enforcing the drug laws more so in our cities than in the country or the suburbs, which is largely made up of white people? The numbers indicate that the answer is "yes." Stop and frisk law enforcement demonstrates this in every city in America.
In March this year, we learned about Newark, N.J. which has an African American population of 52%. The op-ed piece in the N.J. Star Ledger states that " Newark cops appear to be targeting mostly black men in searched that often lead nowhere." And Newark police are worse than New York City police when it comes to stop and frisk. In 2011, New York's rare was 89 police stop 1,000, while Newark arrested 91 per 1,000 citizens. Seventy-five percent of those stopped and frisked in Newark were black.
I ask again, has anyone in the government or law enforcement in Newark or New York City, or in the national spectrum for that matter, seen and honestly analyzed these numbers?
In March this year, we learned about Newark, N.J. which has an African American population of 52%. The op-ed piece in the N.J. Star Ledger states that " Newark cops appear to be targeting mostly black men in searched that often lead nowhere." And Newark police are worse than New York City police when it comes to stop and frisk. In 2011, New York's rare was 89 police stop 1,000, while Newark arrested 91 per 1,000 citizens. Seventy-five percent of those stopped and frisked in Newark were black.
I ask again, has anyone in the government or law enforcement in Newark or New York City, or in the national spectrum for that matter, seen and honestly analyzed these numbers?
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