Report Shows Racial Impact of Drug War Policies in Counties Across U.S.

Of 198 counties examined in the report, 193 showed racial disparities in the use of prison for drug offenses. While African Americans and whites use and sell drugs at similar rates, the report revealed that African Americans are ten times more likely than whites to be imprisoned for drug offenses.

“The exponential removal of people of color who have substance abuse problems from their communities and into prisons undermines and destabilizes neighborhoods--it does not make them safer,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Drug addiction doesn’t discriminate but our drug policies do.”

“The Vortex: The Concentrated Racial Impact of Drug Imprisonment and the Characteristics of Punitive Counties,” found that counties with higher poverty rates, larger African American populations and larger police or judicial budgets imprison people for drug offenses at higher rates than counties without these characteristics. These relationships were found to be independent of whether the county actually had a higher rate of crime.

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