Evidence that anti-drug campaigns were intentionally racist?

by blueberry_crepe

I have heard many drug experts say the different banning of drugs and pursuit of drug criminals was racist. For example, targetting cocaine was due to a racist efforts against blacks.

Is there any evidence this is actually racist? And I define racist as "intentionally racist," not just "consequentially racist." As such, is there historical evidence that policy makers pursued these policies to intentionally be racist, and if only white people did these crimes and the corresponding violence, these laws would not have been passed?

KyleBridge

It really depends on when you're talking. The biggest drug problem in the US has traditionally been opiate use, and most of the time users have been disproportionately white. I know more about the policy-side of things before the 1970s. What follows is lifted from an encyclopedia article I'm writing on drug use/policy in US history. Race comes in at the end, but you should gather that the policies were not, as you put it, "intentionally racist."

Before 1914, virtually no formal controls restricted nationwide drug distribution in the United States. Iatrogenic opiate and cocaine addiction constituted the major drug problems of the late nineteenth century. Opium tincture was long a staple of analgesic patent medicines, and both physicians and patients employed morphine, codeine, and laudanum for a variety of discomforts (without the inconvenience of a prescription), especially after the 1850s advent of the hypodermic needle. Predictably, opiate addiction, what was then called the "opium habit" or "chronic opium intoxication," multiplied for decades and reached epidemic levels by the end of the century. Historian David Courtwright estimates that the rate increased from not more than 0.72 addict per thousand prior to 1842, to a maximum of 4.59 per thousand in the 1890s, or more than sixfold.

Cocaine addiction also spread as the drug became a lauded medical marvel. German chemist Albert Niemann isolated cocaine from coca leaves in 1860, and the resulting powder gained widespread acclaim from doctors by the mid-1880s. Cocaine relieved mucous membrane inflammation, indigestion, depression, and could anesthetize the surface of the eye for surgery. Its stimulating effects, reportedly used to invigorate soldiers on patrol, also potentially offered a new method to wean opiate addicts from their habit. Soon, however, many doctors documented patients developing a dependence, or simply trading the opium habit for cocaine.

By 1902, most medical institutions determined that the current situation was untenable. The American Pharmaceutical Association formally backed nationwide control legislation, and joined the American Medical Association in calling for smoking opium bans. Scrupulous physicians had already begun withholding habituating drugs as problematic addiction became apparent in medical practice. However, as medical use declined, nonmedical use remained conspicuous and increasingly intolerable to the public. The typical addict of the late nineteenth century, an upper- or middle-class white woman who could afford extended medical care, was replaced by the typical addict of the early twentieth century, an underclass urban white male. The transformed user population, which concentrated opiate and cocaine addiction to vice dens of tenderloin districts, cemented public opinion against nonmedical drug use.

Algebrace

It is not inherently racist against blacks but rather poor people of which the black population make up a disproportionate amount.

As my lecturer said "crack smack cocaine will give you 5 years in prison for 500 grams while 5 grams of smack crack cocaine will give you 5 years in prison. The difference being that crack smack cocaine is a rich man's drug while smack crack is a poor mans drug".

There is various sources out there detailing how being black will lend to inherent discrimination i.e. longer prison sentences/harsher punishments but that can be seen more as racist enforcers compared to a non-racist law. Whether or not it is intentionally is another issue however as the wording might not be racist but the intent could be.

An example of this would be the White Australia Policy where the wording was not inherently non-racist however the way it was implemented and encouraged was due to it hinging on a dictation test that could be done in any language (so a Chinese person would be given a scandinavian test and fail automatically).

Basically wording wise it is not racist, implementation-wise it is.

EDIT: Switched the names around