RACIAL SIDE OF DRUGS RECOUNTED

The latest version of Jim Crow. America's apartheid. That's what this
country's war on drugs has become, according to speakers at a drug
policy conference Friday.

And, seeing few brown or black faces among several hundred attendees,
African-American and Hispanic speakers said change won't happen until
their communities are drawn into the drug law reform effort.

"There is an uncomfortable but very powerful truth," said James Forman
Jr., an attorney and fellow with the New American Foundation in
Washington, D.C. "For this movement to be successful it has to
challenge itself ... to reach out to its natural allies, many of whom
are not in this room."

He was speaking in Albuquerque to the annual conference of The
Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, a group that is positioning
itself at the forefront of efforts to end the war against drugs,
saying it has not worked.

Not only has it not worked, but it has caused tremendous harm --
especially among minorities, according to its critics.
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., reeled off a series of statistics
that showed the disproportionate impact suffered by African-Americans:

* African-Americans make up 12 percent of the population, 15 percent
of drug users, but 33 percent of all people convicted of federal drug
crimes.

* In 1996, before mandatory minimum sentences were enacted, sentences
for drug-related crimes were 11 percent longer for African-Americans
than for whites. Now, sentences for blacks are 49 percent longer.

* Black women are imprisoned for drug crimes at eight times the rate
of white women, and Hispanic women are imprisoned at four times the
rate of Anglo women.

Waters, who has introduced federal legislation repealing mandatory
minimum sentences for drug crimes, said she grew up in St. Louis and
saw friends and neighbors suffer from the effects of illegal drugs.

"I was just a young girl and couldn't help my friends and neighbors
then, but I can damn sure do something for them now," she said.

For a long time, African-Americans and Hispanics have supported
tougher sentencing for drug offenders because of the toll drug use has
taken in their communities, the speakers said.

The dramatic growth of gang violence related to drug sales fed that
hard-line approach, said Antonio Gonzales, president of the Southwest
Voter Registration Education Project. "At one point, the city of Los
Angeles had more gang-related killings per annum than there were
killings in the Salvadoran war at the same time," he said.

But Latino support for tough sentences is fading as people see family
members and friends getting locked up, he said. According to Gonzales,
Hispanics make up 12 percent of the population and 10 percent of the
drug users -- but 22.5 percent of those locked up in state prisons for
drug felonies. In 1999, 42.5 percent of all defendants brought up on
drug trafficking charges were Hispanic, he said.

Sometimes, drug dealing appears to be the most viable alternative for
people to support their families, said Deborah Small, Lindesmith's
director of public policy and community outreach.

At the age of 50, her father lost his job and his savings, she said.
Finding himself broke, he joined other family members in dealing
drugs, she said.

"My father was found naked, a bullet in his head, in the Bronx River
Park in January," Small said.

This happened, she said, a year after she graduated from Harvard Law
School.

"We have to be the ones to talk about this," said Small, an
African-American. "You can't represent me in this."