Institutional racism and drug laws

Racial disparities regarding marijuana usage
The American Civil Liberties Union reported that rates of marijuana use and non-use between whites and Blacks are roughly equal.



The data that the ACLU cites doesn’t actually show it being roughly equal. Furthermore, all of the data the ACLU uses for marijuana usage is based on self reports. Self reports on drugs aren't accurate.

While it is true that blacks have higher arrest rates for marijuana, there is evidence that shows blacks are willing to be more reckless when buying Marijuana."“African Americans [as opposed to whites] are nearly twice as likely to buy outdoors (0.31 v 0.14), three times more likely to buy from a stranger (0.30 v 0.09), and significantly more likely to buy away from their homes (0.61 v 0.48).” –Ramchand on Marijuana"

Racial disparity of cocaine use
Cocaine usage is generally higher among black men than white men; Self-reports are not accurate.

Creation
In 1986, in response to the crack cocaine epidemic, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which instituted the 1 gram of crack cocaine to 100 grams of powder cocaine equivalency.


 * This law was supported by the majority of the blacks in Congress
 * Harsh cocaine laws were supported by many black leaders
 * Further reading

McDonald and Carlson 1993
'''This study examines racial and ethnic disparities in sentences imposed on Federal offenders before and after implementation of the sentencing guidelines authorized by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 and the mandatory minimum imprisonment provisions of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Patterns in sentences for whites, blacks, and Hispanics were analyzed by controlling for explanatory variables that may be correlated' with race or ethnicity, and by simulating the sentences that would have been imposed under alternative sentencing schemes.'''

"White, black, and Hispanic offenders convicted of trafficking in crack cocaine differed in a number of ways, including the amount of drug sold, the seriousness of the offenders' prior criminal records, whether or not weapons were involved (and whether there were secondary offenses of conviction for firearms offenses), whether offenders pleaded guilty rather than went to trial, and whether charges were reduced in exchange for a guilty plea. Within the category of crack trafficking our statistical analyses estimated that these differences accounted for all of the observed variation in imprisonment sentences."

"Incarceration rates were high for all offenders convicted of drug trafficking (95 %), but the rates for white offenders were slightly lower than for blacks and Hispanics (92 % for whites, 96 % for blacks, and 97% for Hispanics). There was a much larger difference in the length of imprisonment sentences imposed. Whites received sentences averaging 70 months, compared with 96 months for blacks and 68 months for Hispanics. However, virtually all of these dissimilarities were accounted for by differences among charged offenses, rather than by offenders' race or ethnicity."

MacDonald 2008
Severity of crack laws


 * "Since federal crack rules are more severe than those for powder, and crack offenders are disproportionately black, those rules must explain why so many blacks are in prison, the conventional wisdom holds.
 * But consider that in 2006, only 5,619 crack sellers were tried federally, 4,495 of them black. It’s going to take a lot more than 5,000 or so crack defendants a year to account for the 562,000 black prisoners in state and federal facilities at the end of 2006 — or the 858,000 black prisoners in custody overall, if one includes the population of county and city jails.
 * Moreover, the press almost never mentions the federal methamphetamine-trafficking penalties, which are identical to those for crack. In 2006, the 5,391 sentenced federal meth defendants were 54% white, 39% Hispanic and 2% black. No one calls the federal meth laws anti-Hispanic or anti-white.

Self-reported drug use
Self reported drug use isn't accurate.

In general self reports for drug in general vary among different ethnic groups. Blacks on average are more willing to lie on self reports than the average.

According to Fendrich and Johnson 2005, a study that matched self reports and then double-checked honesty with a urine test and hair test and biologically determined whether or not the sample of 600 18-40-year old adults had actually used drugs


 * There was only a 90% concordance rate for cocaine for blacks, 95 percent concordance rate for hispanics, and 99 percent for whites
 * For weed it was 87% among african americans, 96 percent among hispanic americans, and 100% among white americans

Prison Growth due to drug offenses
According to MacDonald 2008


 * Violent crime has always been the leading driver of prison growth, especially since the 1990s. In state prisons, where 88% of the nation’s inmates are housed, violent and property offenders make up over 3 1/2 times the number of state drug offenders.
 * Next, critics blame drug enforcement for rising racial disparities in prison. Again, the facts say otherwise. In 2006, blacks were 37.5% of the 1,274,600 state prisoners. If you remove drug prisoners from that population, the percentage of black prisoners drops to 37%

ED visits involving illicit drugs, by patient demographics (Dawn 2011) may be an unbiased way to look at the racial disparity of real drug usage