WHY IS DRUG WAR TARGETING BLACKS?

A report released this month by Human Rights Watch, an international
watchdog organization, demonstrates in such detail that it can no
longer be ignored that the war on drugs is waged disproportionately
and cruelly against African Americans (find the report at
www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/ ).

Voters need to hear from both major-party candidates how they would
address this situation, which contributes significantly to a growing
distrust of the judicial system among minority Americans.

As Jamie Fellner, associate counsel of Human Rights Watch, notes:
"Most drug offenders are white. Five times as many whites use drugs as
blacks. But blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent
to prison."

These figures could be tweaked slightly. Black people make up about 13
percent of the population, white people about 73 percent, so there are
slightly more than five times as many white people as black people,
which might mean a slightly higher percentage of black people than
white people use illicit drugs. Still, if the laws were applied
equally, one would expect to see about five times as many white people
as African Americans in prison for drug offenses.

But that's not how it is. Nationwide, black people comprise 62 percent
of drug offenders sent to state prisons. Nationwide, black men are
sent to prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men.

Can anyone fail to be shocked at such disparities?

There may be reasons besides blatant racial prejudice why this might
be the case, as Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth
acknowledged. Drug use and drug transactions in black neighborhoods
are more likely to occur on the streets, which police can patrol, than
inside suburban homes. Some police departments use "profiles" to
identify suspects in ways that bring more black people to police
attention. And enhanced sentences for "crack" cocaine compared with
powder cocaine tend to put more black people than white in prison for
longer periods.

Whatever the reasons, however, this is an unjust, divisive and
potentially explosive phenomenon.

Human Rights Watch recommends the elimination of mandatory minimum
sentences for drug offenses, more use of alternatives to
incarceration, more use of "drug courts," more treatment programs and
the end of racial profiling.

Those modest steps should be just the beginning of a wholesale
reconsideration of a disastrous approach to drug policy. The current
policy hasn't worked and has imposed the costs disproportionately on
racial minorities.