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Article: Race, drugs, and law enforcement in the United States.(Symposium: Drug Laws: Policy and Reform)
- Article from:
- Stanford Law & Policy Review
- Article date:
- March 22, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Stanford Law School. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Since the mid-1980s, the United States has pursued aggressive law enforcement strategies to curtail the use and distribution of illegal drugs. The costs and benefits of this national "war on drugs" remain fiercely debated. (1) What is not debatable, however, is that this ostensibly race-neutral effort has been waged primarily against black Americans. Relative to their numbers in the general population and among drug offenders, black Americans are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and incarcerated on drug charges.
Public officials have been relatively untroubled by the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of blacks for drug offenses. Their relative ...