It's curious the difference in response to the current "opioid epidemic". Where is the police crackdown in this case?
I don't think it's a stretch to say that the criminal justice system is biased against the poor, and exceptionally biased against poor minorities. Since Baltimore demographics are heavily represented by minorities, it's no surprise things happening differently there vs Appalachia.
If police and policy-makers were serious about curbing drug use and truly thought their methods worked, they'd go after coke and crack users with the same methods and intensity.
It doesn't; the intensity of the drug war produces the amount of money involved and the street price, as it creates a barrier to entry (reducing competition) and produces supplier costs; it thus increases the minimum sustainable cost and the ability of suppliers to charge above that cost.
But even if we assume causation runs the way you state, the point is that a drug war's intensity and the amount of money wrapped up in it are inextricably linked. If you're buying expensive drugs, then it's highly likely that high-cost operations are involved. In a lawless industry, that means more lawlessness.
However both are supplied by the same violent supply chain that the "war" is supposed to stop.
Honest question - how can the criminal justice system in Baltimore be biased against 'black people's drugs' as a minority when they are numerically in the majority? It is an interesting logistical challenge to discriminate against a 60% voting block in a democracy. Is criminal justice enforced by non-city actors? (I'm not an American)
[0] planning.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/2a_City%20Profile%20-%203.30.16_0.pdf
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/02/why-many-black-p...
crack cocaine did incredible damage to urban black communities, and the laws were a reflection of that. obviously the laws went on to do incredible damage in their own right as well.
Dealing with crack usage as a public health problem would have been far superior.
The harshest of the drug war existed prior to the 1994 crime bill as well.
Locking up 1 out of 4 African American males for drug possession or addict isn't going to fix the problem, it only makes it worse.
[0] https://www.aclu.org/other/cracks-system-20-years-unjust-fed...
Local jurisdictions, when they do participate in enforcement, are incentivized on convictions and other metrics and alignment to the Federal system is better. So, even if the local police, DA, judge and others in the system are national minorities, but local majorities, they are still working for the national majority policies.
Oh, they SO can be. They might be numerically in the majority, but the people in power (including some Black people) don't give a SHIT about poor Black people. And act like it.
Not all the people in power are elected (lots of unelected people and institutions have SO much power, like Johns Hopkins, and major developers). But for those who are elected, how they keep getting elected when not only Black people but probably poor Black people are a majority, it's a bit of a mystery to me too.
</lives in Baltimore>
Police are tasked with enforcing these laws which are HEAVILY biased towards the kinds of drugs African Americans deal with.
Possession of 28 grams of crack cocaine yields a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for a first offense; it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to prompt the same sentence.
Ask yourself who the original majority population in the area were, and where they went. Then ask yourself who the current majority population is, where they came from, and how and why they arrived there. Then ask yourself what population has had the most power there over, say, the last 400 years. You may find that a majority population does not always have a majority of the power.
You can also compare the current state of affairs to the history of other countries. If the majority population is limited by (1) lack of right to vote, (2) lack of access to vote, (3) lack of information to vote, and (4) lack of belief in the vote, that population's effect on local politics can be shrunk down to have very little impact.
And also consider the practical aspects. Even if 99% of your citizenry vote for something, like increased funding for schools - where is the money going to come from if 75% of your population is impoverished? Definitely not from the federal government. You can't just vote yourself out of a terrible local economy.
It's not about the money.
As an FYI, Baltimore City and Baltimore County are separate entities (the city is not part of the county).
I cannot speak on the 70s and 80s, but from present observation OP’s assessment of crack vs. cocaine penalties would perhaps be more relevant to a city like NYC than Baltimore. Cocaine (the good stuff rich white people would buy) is not as common because there isn’t enough of a market that could afford it. Overall, heroin is now the most ubiquitous drug with other prescription meds/opioids used as substitutes sometimes. Heroin has really hit the city hard.
In terms of policing/justice, corruption is a pretty big issue. On an everyday level, the police basically won’t do shit unless there is a crime worth their while (so in a hit-and-run or theft for example don’t expect much help).
The neighborhoods in the East and West sides are high in violent crime from gangs and drugs. There are blocks with more rundown vacant houses than occupied ones. Compared to the gentrified pockets, these areas are like favelas.
Baltimore has its redeeming highlights, but it’s nowhere near the industrious city it once was, and is still trying to find a new direction.
Crack was regarded as a national emergency in the 80’s. That never happened with powdered cocaine beyond the local drug wars in Miami.
I doubt that’s true.
The powers that be of reactionary politics love to use fear to divert attention and scapegoat racial minorities or foreigners in order to avoid having to address real problems and potentially stop protecting their paymasters.
You just brought back childhood memories of having to eat smooshed candy bars after my mom got done checking them for razor blades and needles. Every. Single. Halloween.
> I’d tracked Ehrlichman, who had been Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser, to an engineering firm in Atlanta, where he was working on minority recruitment. At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away.
> “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Good example: go out in the street in Russia at night drunk, unshaven and with dirty clothes, and you'd be beaten and robbed by cops. Do same in a good suit and shaven and you'll be alright.
Second, the density gradient of people is quite different and thus far less profitable. Going after the opioid epidemic means going mostly after single individuals in places far less populated with people. The Internet has also dispersed most drug delivery--this is quite a bit different from when the crackdown on crack was running.
Third, the age of the affected is vastly different and creates a far different optics. If you are rounding up "troubled city teens", you're not going to get much pushback from anyone. If you are rounding up "grandma", the press is going to have a field day. This is not new--there is a reason why you know who Rosa Parks is but not Claudette Colvin.
I'm sure all the other reasons listed also play a role, but I'm a bit surprised it escaped everyone (myself included) that opioids line corporate pockets, and crack does not. Given the extent of corporate influence in the US, I'd wager this is the dominant reason.