ABSTRACT
In recent years the criminal justice system in the United States has oriented itself toward waging a politically popular “war on drugs.” It is a war that many will say is hopelessly lost, in the same way that Prohibition’s war on alcohol was lost. Some argue that the war on drugs is self-defeating. No doubt, as a result of the criminalization of most psychoactive drugs (beginning with the Harrison Act of 1914), fewer people use them than would if such drugs were legalized.1 But, as in the case of Prohibition under the 18th Amendment, this does not mean that less damage is done to individuals or to society as a whole. The criminalization of psychoactive drugs has, it is argued, grossly aggravated the incidence of violence and poverty in society and has even stimulated greater drug abuse and addiction. Having made opiates, depressants (except for alcohol), stimulants (except for nicotine), and hallucinogens illegal and attached severe penalties not only to their distribution but also to the individuals who use them, we have created a class of criminals whose size some analysts estimate to be as large as 30 to 40 million people. Less
than 3 percent of those who use drugs are apprehended and punished each year, and this comes at extraordinary costs to the legal system.2 Most of those punished are African Americans, even though as a group they consume far fewer illicit drugs than middleclass Caucasians. This can only have damaging effects on many people’s attitudes toward the fairness and efficiency of the criminal justice system and only increase African Americans’ sense of social alienation and injustice.
