Crack Cocaine Research Paper

Everyone knows that Nita is on hard drugs (cocaine). She will sleep with men for money. It was told to the reporter more than once that Nita would allow grown men to have oral sex with her child for drugs. The child would be hollering, probably because she does not like it. It was unknown if this is happening to the other child.

According to the article, The Drug War, Mass Incarceration, and Race “ Black people comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population,10 and are consistently documented by the U.S. government to use drugs at similar rates to people of other races.11 But black people comprise 31 percent of those arrested for drug law violations,12 and nearly 40 percent of those incarcerated”. Despite the fact that colored people are minorities in the country still, make up 1/3 of the people arrested because of the drug policy. The policy effective created to target the minorities by making the cocaine the main focus of the drug. “America of the poor, where, amid hopelessness and lack of education, people will suffer the worst consequences of cocaine”(Kerr, 1) which in many poor communities lived the colored minorities, this made it easier for the police officer to target and arrest the

It is an existing theory that our society is constructed via racial dimensions, and that racial equality is a figment of the imagination. This very principle is highlighted in Michelle Alexander’s novel, “The New Jim Crow.” The specific dimensions covered within the text include the unjust aspects of the federal drug policy, and by connection that of mass incarceration as well. Alexander claims that racism is still very prominent in present day society and is direct and frank about the heavy influence of white supremacy. One of the main arguments pushed by Alexander in this book is that mass incarceration is “ a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar

This then resulted in more African Americans getting arrested for possession of drugs. Once they were arrested the amount of time they would do for the possession was sometimes life sentences. This caused prisons to become over crowded and

The people incarcerated for drug abuse are mainly Black or other minorities. The system can not be color blind when a specific group is incarcerated at higher rates than another. According to “ The Drug War as Race War,” Kenneth B. Nunn shares a fact from the Mental Health department saying that “ 76% are White drug users, 14% are Black, and 8% are Hispanic” ( Nunn). The incarceration rates should be higher for Whites given the fact that they have a higher drug usage reported. In all reality, it would not make sense to lock up any group at a significantly greater rate compared

. In Marc Mauer’s philosophy Mass Imprisonment, talks about the mass incarceration in United States. Marc Mauer gets into the mass incarceration of a particular race, economic standing with tax payer dollars, and how did mass incarceration came to be in private and public prison setting. Mass incarnation stemmed from the “war on drugs” and “get tough” policy. These policies were initiated by former President Ronald Regan and enforced throughout the 1980s – early 2000s, when George Bush Jr became president he reformed prisons with programs to help the formerly incinerated blend back in with the community.

Since the Reagan administration, all proceeding presidents have continued to win votes by using this dog-whistle strategy. It sends abstract messages through coded language that sounds neutral on the surface, but plays on white resentment to minorities without appearing racially motivated (SG 16). The effectiveness of this strategy becomes obvious when reflecting on some statistics about drug usage and incarceration rates. Since 1983 when mass incarceration truly began escalating, African American incarceration has increased by 26 percent. This increase has caused approximately 80 to 90 percent of drug offenders currently in prison to be African American while no evidence exists that Blacks use or sell drugs any more than Whites (NJC).

A social problem that greatly effects the African American community is racial profiling. This problem is caused a history of racism and prejudice in American society and its criminal justice system. Racial profiling is a way for police officers to attain their quota for tickets or arrests by heavily patrolling communities heavily populated by minorities and targeting them. This results in a high number of African Americans, as well as Hispanics, being ticketed or sent to jail for minor offenses or crimes. One such offense is the possession of marijuana, where statistics have shown that Blacks and Hispanics have disproportionately been arrested for this offense compared to White people in New York City.

Statistics prove that Mandatory Minimums affect minorities disproportionately. In fact, African Americans are over 10 times more likely to enter prison for drug offenses than their Caucasian counterparts despite both racial groups using drugs in equal amounts. This shows the racial bias of the Justice System at work by using Mandatory Minimums to punish minorities with harsher sentences. Blacks and Hispanics make up 74.4 percent of the people convicted of drug charges while only making up less than 30 percent of the population. Indicative of this widespread problem, 39.4 percent of convictions in 2011 involved Mandatory Minimum Sentencing (United States Sentencing Commission 148).

The Cocaine Epidemic The beginning of the crack cocaine epidemic began in the early 1970’s when crack cocaine was considered a fashionable drug for entertainers and businesspeople. Cocaine helped users stay awake and it gave them energy for the day. It was popular for businessmen or anyone with a stressful job to take. It even spread to colleges as we see in most colleges the amount of students experimenting with cocaine increased tenfold from 1970 to 1980. By the late 1970’s Colombian drug cartels began smuggling massive amounts of cocaine into major United States cities, primarily Miami and New York City.

Approximately 13 percent of the United States population is made up of African-Americans and 13.5 percent of annual Marijuana users, and yet, African-Americans alone make up 26 percent of annual arrests for possession charges. New studies have shown that Latinos and African-Americans face a much larger risk of getting arrested for possession and use of marijuana than Caucasians do. This shows that the United States law enforcement has done a very poor job demonstrating that the prohibition on Marijuana can be enforced fairly among all Americans (Adler, 2015,

However, marijuana- that was still legal at the time, became popular, and the government noticed. Mexico and America relationship was defined due to the drugs transportation to America from Mexico, as Sara Miller Llana and Sara Shahriari said, “Latin America remains the world's No. 1 supplier of cocaine,” American governments were afraid that Mexicans would immigrate to America and cause more drug crimes. The Marijuana Tax Act was passed in 1937, the purpose of the Act was to keep track on the selling and transportation of marijuana but due to the few stamps that were documented, meaning the rest of the dealers were under the table selling, marijuana was made

The arrival of opium during this period was due in large part to the drug being transported into the country thru Chinese immigrants who came here to work on the railroads. True American history tells us that well-known names of the period like Kit Carson and Wild Bill Hickock actually visited opium dens more frequently than saloons. The stereo-typed

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan launched the “War on Drugs” campaign to combat illegal drug use. The African

Politicians must come up with a way to get rid of them, without it being obvious they are racially discriminating them. Their only solution was to criminalize them by creating anti-drug laws. They associated