Article by andre douglas pond cummings & Steven A. Ramirez
The War on Drugs (WOD) transmogrified into a war on communities of color early in its history, and its impact has devastated communities of color first and foremost. People of color disproportionately suffer incarceration in the WOD even though people of color use illegal narcotics at substantially lower rates than white Americans. As a result, the WOD led to mass incarceration of people of color at many times the rate of white Americans. Indeed, as a stark illustration of the power of race in America, even after Illinois and Colorado legalized cannabis, over-policing in communities of color resulted in a substantial increase in arrests of people of color while white youth arrests declined. Thus, when police brutality against communities of color exploded into the consciousness of America in 2020, it vindicated many voices suggesting a close link to the WOD and its implicit targeting of people of color.
Part II reviews the history of the WOD with a focus on the emergence of mass incarceration and the dynamics by which implicit bias and actual bias translated into disproportionate suffering in communities of color, including suffering at the hands of brutal policing in those communities. Part III builds upon Part II but seeks to quantify the costs of the continued harms of the WOD in order to identify cost-effective resolutions of this fundamental source of systemic racism in our society. Part IV critiques the first and, as of yet, primary federal legislative remedy on offer for the resolution of the WOD. It also proposes mechanisms beyond that pending federal bill for repairing the damage to communities of color inflicted upon them by the WOD. The Article concludes that repairing the damage of the WOD will require more aggressive steps than those currently on offer.
About the Authors
andre douglas pond cummings, Associate Dean for Faculty Development & Charles C. Baum Distinguished Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Racial Justice and Criminal Justice Reform, University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law.
Steven A. Ramirez, Abner J. Mikva Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago
Citation
96 Tul. L. Rev. 469 (2022)