Symposium Abstract

The Journal’s sixth symposium focused on how the drug war disproportionately impacts certain individuals based on their race, gender, class, or other marginalized status, while examining the interplay between the economy and the international community.

Panelists reported that minorities are much more likely to be targeted by law enforcement agencies as suspects for drug infractions. Panelists were surprised by this statistics because evidence suggests that although whites are underrepresented as targets of narcotic warrants relative to their percent of the total population, warrants targeting whites had the highest recovery rate. Drug defendants’ ethnicity (as well as gender) also found affects sentence severity, as females and whites experience greater sentence reductions to the disadvantage of males and non-whites.

This disproportionate enforcement of drug laws has had a negative impact on minority communities. Because of zero-tolerance drug policies, including expulsion and the denial of financial aid to drug law offenders, the War on Drugs has resulted in a deprivation of education and the perpetuation of an uneducated underclass. Additionally, panelists argued that certain collateral effects of drug sentencing, such as the loss of the right to vote, further weaken minority communities.

Reliance on the criminal sanction as the principle solution to the drug problem is futile, and the prevalence of jury acquittals and hung juries in drug cases should serve as a signal to legislative and executive entities that a change in drug laws is in order. Emphasis on "harm reduction," minimizing the risks people face from their drug habits, is one alternative solution.

Symposium Articles

Andrew D. Leipold, "The War on Drugs and the Puzzle of Deterrence"

Abraham Abramovsky & Jonathan I. Edelstein, "The Drug War and the American Jewish Community: 1880 to 2002 and Beyond"

Celesta A. Albonetti, "The Joint Conditioning Effect of Defendant's Gender and Ethnicity on Length of Imprisonment Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Drug Trafficking/Manufacturing Offenders"

Eric Blumenson & Eva S. Nilsen, "How to Construct an Underclass, or How the War on Drugs Became a War on Education"

Laurence A. Benner, "Racial Disparity in Narcotics Search Warrants"

Eric Blumenson, "Recovering From Drugs and The Drug War: An Achievable Public Health Alternative"

Gabriel J. Chin, "Race, the War on Drugs, and the Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction"

Phyllis Goldfarb, "Counting the Drug War's Female Casualties"

Maria Grahn-Farley, "A Child Perspective on the Juvenile Justice System"

Nancy S. Marder, "Juries, Drug Laws & Sentencing"

Kenneth B. Nunn, "Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the 'War on Drugs' Was A 'War on Blacks'"

Margaret Raymond, "Commentary on 'The Drug War'" (Commentary)