Other drug articles from San Francisco State University

Le Sheng Liu
Drugs & Society
October 22, 2002

REACTION PAPER # 2 – DISCRIMINATION & DRUG POLICY

In the article Racism, drug policy, and AIDS, Cathy Lisa Schneider offers a variety of arguments and statistics that weigh in on her conclusion that racist legislation, law enforcement, and incarceration in recent years lead to more harmful methods of drug use among blacks and Latinos. Unfortunately, Schneider presents nothing new here, for discriminatory drug policies have not been limited to black and Latino syringe users in the 1980s and ‘90s. Her argument can be applied to different generations, decades, cultures, races, classes, and drugs.

Schneider does, in fact, cite some examples from the early 20th century in her article. For instance, liquid concoctions of opium had been used in the United States for decades already before Chinese immigrants brought over their method of smoking it in dens after the Gold Rush. By the late 1800s, our government’s reaction to this foreign lifestyle was immense fear – fear that the Chinese were corrupting U.S. society and luring white women into their dens for intoxication and rape – and excessive taxation of imported smoked opium, as well as the closure of the dens. In the decades to follow, similar restrictions and prohibitions would be applied to marijuana against Mexican immigrants and cocaine against Southern black men with the same justifications – these people’s drug use lead to behaviors of crime, violence, and rape. In fact, Southern newspapers reported stories of African-American men possessing monstrous strength and madness under the influence of cocaine to the point that police had to use special bullets to subdue them.

In the latter half of the 20th century, cultures – not just races – were and are still being scapegoated under the prohibition of particular drugs. Perhaps the most vivid example of this is the psychedelic subculture which flourished during the hippy movement of the 1960s and has returned in the underground rave scene since the late 1980s. Both periods have their share of youthfulness, music, colorful fashion, untraditional lifestyles, and, of course, prevalent drug use. The Richard Nixon era of America was threatened by a generation of teens rejecting conformity and convention – refusing to attend college, secure a day job, raise a nuclear family, or even sport normal clothes and hair. Such decisions were not illegal. But although they posed no threat to public safety, they posed a major threat to public ideology. What resulted was a hysterically inaccurate campaign portraying confusion, sexual vulnerability, suicidal actions, and violent outrages as LSD’s only effects. And although, to this day, not much long-term research or widespread incidences have surfaced to clarify the risks of its use, the chemical was scheduled as a way of dealing with the counterculture.

Less than two decades later, MDMA was outlawed, again with no evidence to support why the scheduling was necessary. What had happened by 1985 was that MDMA use had expanded from the therapeutic community to colleges and bars, apparently frightening the DEA despite the fact that no research or major cases had even suggested MDMA was particularly harmful yet. In recent years, the U.S. government has been heightening legislation and enforcement against MDMA as its illegal use has skyrocketed. But one particular group of users – youths in the underground rave scene – have been singled out by the government as the focus of concern. Names of proposed laws to reduce and punish the use of MDMA make this bias clear – Anti-Club Drug Act, R.A.V.E. (Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy) Act, etc. Furthermore, all events featuring the curfew duration, dancing, or music that’s popular with raves have been banned in some parts of the United States. Even possessing or sporting the fashion, toys, and anything considered rave paraphernalia is prohibited in certain areas. Again, the intent of legislation and enforcement isn’t simply to eliminate drug use, but to suppress the behaviors and lifestyles associated with a certain culture.

Even the poor have been discriminated against as a result of drug policy. The strictness of crack laws compared to cocaine laws, for example, ultimately target ghetto urban users since the blackmarket economy allows wealthier upper class users to snort powder cocaine while lower class users can only afford the shorter-acting but cheaper crack cocaine. The Crackhouse Law of the 1980s, which charged landlords if they allowed crack use or distribution to happen on their property, would have only effected poorer neighborhoods since the clandestine atmosphere and method of operation associated with crackhouses does not exist in higher class drug activity that happens in private homes instead of on the streets or in run-down buildings. Today, such discrimination has been brought all the way to our universities. The Higher Education Act, which was passed in 1998, denies federal financial aid to students who have had convictions with illegal drugs. Obviously, this would not affect drug users or dealers whose parents are rich enough to support them through college, nor does it address murder, rape, robbery, child molestation, kidnapping, or drunk driving. This law only applies to one type of criminal – offenders of scheduled drugs – and punishes one class of students – those who can’t afford a college education without government support.

Cathy Lisa Schneider’s article Racism, drug policy, and AIDS was certainly thorough. It explored the blatantly disgusting relationship between these three issues clearly. Sadly, though, her discussion was all old news to me. Drug policy has long been linked to numerous forms of discrimination and scapegoating of all sorts of drugs and people in our country.

For an outlined chart of the historical information above, go here.

Feel free to email me at lesliu@gmail.com for questions or feedback.

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