The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Hey Carl! Caaarrrl!” a woman’s voice yelled from behind, as I walked across the picturesque Columbia campus on a crisp February day. I was headed to Sing Sing Correctional Facility to teach a course on drugs and human behavior. Every Friday evening during the spring semester, I made the hour-and-a-half journey from the university to prison, carrying with me a host of conflicting emotions, ranging from a great deal of sadness to pride to complicity.
I also carried my noise-canceling headphones, and I didn’t initially hear the woman’s call because I had already donned them. I was lost in the rich bass-baritone voice of Isaac Hayes singing his 1971 song “Soulsville.” In his way, Hayes was calling out the key forces that hampered black men’s economic mobility fifty years back. “Any kind of job is hard to find,” he sang. It took me back. Growing up, I remember my mom stressing, “If you ain’t got no job, you ain’t no man.” The similarities between the conditions that Hayes described then and those faced by my students at Sing Sing decades later are so painful, in part, because they are so obvious and fixable.
The woman shouting my name caught up with me and then had my full attention. It was Ruth, a fellow Columbia faculty member I respected, whom I had known for at least a decade. “I went to Sing Sing last night!” she proclaimed, a giddy smile stretching from ear to ear. It wasn’t a polite, half-hearted grin; it was authentic, spontaneous, and bubbly, even euphoric. She was extremely pleased with herself for having gone to Sing Sing.
Ruth explained that she had taught her first lecture there the previous evening, and she wanted to share with me her excitement. “I had a great time!” she exclaimed. I knew she didn’t mean it this way, but it came across as if she were describing an experience at summer camp.
I really wanted to match her joy but couldn’t. In the three years I had taught at Sing Sing, I couldn’t recall ever thinking, “I had a great time” following a lecture in that dehumanizing space. This isn’t to say I didn’t have a sense of subversive accomplishment from teaching my students how to think, how to identify the hypocrisy and double standards that contribute to their subjugation. But consider what happens when you first arrive for the evening. After making sure you have no electronic devices or anything other than your ID on you, a guard, who greets you with icy indifference, makes you wait outside, sometimes in the bitter cold, sometimes while slowly finishing her meal, sometimes slowly inspecting the same ID she has seen many times before.
Eventually you are summoned to enter the building and ordered to remove your shoes, belt, and other items for inspection. This is followed by passage through a metal detector. All is scoped by the watchful eyes of the chief white overseers: governor Andrew Cuomo, commissioner Anthony Annucci, and warden Michael Capra. Large photos of these men hang on the wall just below huge lettering that reads:
WELCOME TO SING SING CORRECTIONAL FACILITY
WE ARE A TEAM OF ONE
COMMITTED TO SERVE WITH HONOR, INTEGRITY, AND PROFESSIONALISM
Once cleared, you are locked in a cell about ten by ten feet, with three worn wooden benches, a pay phone, and a wooden suggestion box hanging on the drab brick wall. On the opposite wall, a bulletin board contains materials celebrating Black History Month and inspirational quotes from people such as Martin Luther King Jr. You can remain in this cage for as little as fifteen minutes or for close to an hour before taking a ninety-second bus ride to the classroom building. The wait time is up to the discretion of the guard in charge.
Almost all the other instructors were women and white; the students were male and mostly black. I buried my head in lecture notes, pretending not to be tuned into the conversations taking place around me. Most instructors were chatty and appeared remarkably untroubled about being locked in a cage at Sing Sing. Not me. I was perpetually uneasy, fearing the day when some guard would say I “fit the description” and must remain locked behind bars.
On my third trip to Sing Sing, I had my heart broken. Walking into the classroom, I was greeted by an unexpected voice: “What’s up, cuz?” The words were followed by some dap and a warm embrace. It was Robert, my first cousin Sandra’s eldest child. He was wearing green trousers and a green sweatshirt, the standard Sing Sing inmate uniform. I was shocked. I didn’t even know he was locked up, let alone here.
I hadn’t seen Rob since we were children but had a vague memory of family stories of his chaotic upbringing. He and his siblings had been removed from their mother’s custody before he was a teenager, and things didn’t get better from there.
As it turned out, Rob had killed someone, a rival drug dealer, and was now doing twenty-five years to life. As he told it, he had simply beat the man to the punch: his rival had set in motion a plot to kill him because Rob had recently taken over much of his territory.
As Rob walked away, I felt deflated and wondered how I was going to get through the next two hours of teaching. I stood there, alone, searching for answers in that empty, cold, quiet classroom. I reminded myself of my sense of obligation to teach there, my feeling that it is a civic duty. I recalled the sincere pride in the eyes of a student when he told me he’d never met an author prior to taking my course, let alone a black author. I deeply admired my students’ enthusiasm and the intellectually passionate way they tackled the curriculum, not least because some of them had a personal stake in the subject. A number were serving time for drug-related offenses.
It’s impossible to talk about drugs without addressing the elephant in the room—or, more aptly, the albatross around the necks of specific groups—the war on drugs. The ostensible goal of this U.S. government–led campaign is to eradicate certain psychoactive drugs. Today, the American taxpayer spends approximately $35 billion each year fighting this war.1 Yet the drugs in question remain as plentiful, if not more so, than they were in 1981, when the sum total of America’s annual drug-control budget was a mere $1.5 billion.2 What has changed is that now, each year, tens of thousands of Americans die from drug-related overdoses. The popular notion holds that opioids are the primary culprit, but as we will see, it’s not that simple.
GIVEN SOCIETY’S RETURN on the twentyfold increase in our drug-control budget, we could reasonably conclude that the war on drugs has been a complete failure.
It has not. Otherwise this country would not have continued to perpetrate this war decade after decade after decade. True, the war on drugs has not succeeded in the impossible and unrealistic task of ridding society of recreational drugs. Only children and naive adults honestly believe that this was an actual or achievable goal. A vital but unstated aim of the drug war is to shore up the budgets of law-enforcement and prison authorities, as well as such parasitic organizations as drug-treatment centers and urine drug-testing outfits. Law-enforcement entities receive the bulk of federal drug-war dollars.
Here’s an example of how it goes down: entire specialty police units are deployed to poor, usually black or brown neighborhoods, making excessive drug arrests and subjecting targeted communities to dehumanizing treatment. The argument that these communities are exposed to “enhanced police presence” because residents ask for it is either naive or disingenuous; these are the same residents who have asked for, and in fact demanded repeatedly, better schools, more jobs, and an end to police brutality, as well as placed a long list of other reasonable requests.
The bottom line is simple: more drug arrests equate to more overtime, more “throwaway people” in prison, and bigger budgets. These practices ensure job security for a select few, including law-enforcement personnel and prison authorities. The war on drugs has been a financial boon for these individuals, as well as for certain regions that are dependent upon the prison economy. Most prisons in the state of New York, for example, are located in rural, white communities. The prison is usually the major employer in the area. And because a large proportion of the inmates come from areas many miles away, their visiting loved ones have to frequent local restaurants, hotels, and other local businesses. And in states such as Pennsylvania, an incarcerated inmate is counted as a resident of the jurisdiction where their prison is located for purposes of allocating financial resources from the state, a grotesque new twist on the U.S. Constitution’s original 3/5th clause. It’s not difficult to see how the war on drugs has been hugely beneficial for some.
Along the way, however, specific minority communities have been devastated. Complex economic and social forces are routinely reduced to “drug problems,” and resources are directed to those in law enforcement rather than to neighborhoods’ real needs, such as job creation, better education, or lifesaving drug services (discussed in Chapter 3). This is how every “drug crisis” has played out up through today. In essence, the war on drugs is not a war on drugs; it’s a war on us.
Back in the classroom in Sing Sing, we were in the middle of a heated discussion about how the drug war would be carried out during the current “opioid crisis.” “You never let a serious crisis go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel once remarked, “and what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” In line with this view, perhaps the opioid situation could actually provide an opportunity to push for meaningful movement toward regulating all drugs, just as we effectively regulate alcohol or cannabis (in some states). Regulation would certainly reduce the number of deaths caused by contaminated drugs. It would also decrease drug-related arrests and would permit adults freedom to make reasonable decisions about their own drug use. On the other hand, perhaps the current crisis will make the situation even worse—by leading to interventions that further restrict individual liberty and providing another reason to arrest certain Americans at high rates—without helping to solve the purported problem.
“I hate to say it,” Hakeem reluctantly piped up, “but the opioid crisis is ultimately a good thing.” He speculated that because white Americans are seen as the primary users, opioid use—and other drug use by extension—would no longer be treated as a crime. Instead, he predicted, it would be treated as a health problem, an approach that would be beneficial for everyone regardless of race.
Several other students agreed. They highlighted the public perception of large numbers of white Americans experiencing problems related to opioid use, including fatal overdose and addiction. This perception, some felt, has engendered unprecedented sympathy from the broader community for drug users. In 2017, Donald Trump even proclaimed the problem a national emergency. His announcement appeared to consolidate a definite shift in the way the country views certain drug users. They are now patients in need of our help and understanding, rather than criminals deserving scorn and incarceration.
Signs of this shift were evident as early as January 2014. Then governor of Vermont, Peter Shumlin, devoted his entire State of the State address that year to the “heroin crisis” and urged his overwhelmingly white electorate to deal with addiction “as a public health crisis, providing treatment and support, rather than simply doling out punishment, claiming victory and moving on to our next conviction.”3 Politicians around the country from both parties have echoed these sentiments, and in 2018 Congress passed a multibillion-dollar bipartisan bill aimed at curbing opioid-related problems (H.R.6).
What looks like a radical shift to a more compassionate drug policy— one that favors treatment (and other support) over incarceration—has encouraged several of my students, as well as many others, to hope that we are entering an age in which there will be far fewer drug-related arrests and deaths than there were in previous decades.
But a contingent of students was not so optimistic. Mike, for one, gave a firm rebuttal to Hakeem’s comments. “Nah, I disagree,” he snapped. “White still means victim, and black and Hispanic still mean addict and criminal.”
After several minutes of back and forth, the students wanted to hear from me. They wanted to know on which side of the debate I stood.
“Of course I support an approach that favors treatment over incarceration,” I told them. But these aren’t the only options. There are a range of other possibilities, including the removal of criminal sanctions for adults who consume drugs responsibly. At the moment, simple possession of any controlled substance can land a first-time offender in prison for up to one year. On top of this, the person must pay a fine of no less than $1,000. The law gets considerably crueler with subsequent violations or when trafficking or manufacturing are the charges. So offering treatment over incarceration is the bare minimum that we should do, certainly as it relates to dealing with individuals who are struggling with drug addiction. But it is not, historically, what we have done for all our citizens.
I asked the students to recall a previous lecture when I discussed the “crack crisis” of the late 1980s. “Can you imagine,” I asked rhetorically, “Governor George Wallace of Alabama urging his voters to view crack use as a health crisis?” Back then, even northern liberals—both black and white—were calling for foolish and draconian measures to deal with perceived users and sellers of crack. New York governor Mario Cuomo lobbied for life sentences for anyone caught selling crack, in amounts of as little as fifty dollars, while Harlem congressman Charles Rangel advocated for the deployment of military personnel and equipment to rid cities of the drug. The fear of crack and its sellers and users caused mass hysteria. As a result, in 1986 and 1988, Congress passed and extended the infamous Anti–Drug Abuse Act (a.k.a. crack-powder laws), setting penalties that were one hundred times harsher for crack than for powder-cocaine convictions.
The perceived users and sellers of crack were black, young, and menacing, and the public contempt expressed toward this group was intense, visceral, and widely encouraged. In reality, most crack users were white, and most drug users bought their drugs from dealers within their own racial group.4 By 1992, though, more than 90 percent of those sentenced under the harsh crack-powder laws were black.5 They were required to serve a minimum prison sentence of at least five years for small amounts of crack. Under the 1988 law, even first-time offenders were subjected to this stiff penalty for simply possessing crack cocaine. No other drug-law violation resulted in such harsh punishment for first offenders.
To the extent that the use of crack by whites was acknowledged, media reports sympathetically detailed the plight of white middle-class crack users. Crack was understood to be a tool for managing stressful professional lifestyles.
For whites afflicted with crack addiction, medical experts extolled the effectiveness of treatment. Any law-enforcement perspective was conspicuous by its absence. Public service announcements (PSAs), geared toward middle-class crack users, encouraged sympathy and not judgment. Sound familiar?
This pattern of racial differentiation—one drug policy for white users and another for black users—followed the format carried out during the heroin crisis of the late 1960s. In the media, the face of the heroin addict was black, a destitute person engaged in repetitive petty crimes to feed his or her habit. A popular solution was to lock up these users. New York State’s infamous 1973 Rockefeller drug laws exemplified this perspective. This legislation created mandatory-minimum prison sentences of fifteen years to life for possession of small amounts of heroin or other drugs. More than 90 percent of those convicted under the Rockefeller laws were black or Latino, even though they represented a minority of drug users.6
This punitive approach to black heroin users coincided with a massive expansion of methadone maintenance programs that benefited large numbers of white “patients,” including addicted soldiers returning from the Vietnam War.7 Even President Nixon praised methadone “as a useful tool in the work of rehabilitating heroin addicts,” one that “ought to be available to those who must do this work.”8
One feature of methadone programs that was viewed as a drawback was the requirement that the drug be administered through health clinics or hospitals. This meant that patients had to attend the clinic daily in order to receive the medication. This requirement presented an inconvenience for some patients, especially those with jobs and demanding schedules. Also, the fact that patients were required to stand in line outside the clinic in order to receive the medication was viewed as stigmatizing, a form of public shaming. So, in 1971, New York City mayor John Lindsay pushed for the use of private physicians to distribute methadone to a select group of middle-class and insured patients, leaving mostly poor people to stand in those lines, locking in the public face of methadone users.9
This characteristically American pattern of cognitive flexibility on drug policy, with harsh penalties for some and sympathetic treatment for others, has a long history.
I have been well aware of the differential response, based on race, to drug users for quite some time. A recent conversation I had with my friend Abby let me know that others also are tuned in. Abby is white, old enough to be retired, and financially well off; she’s also a lifelong pot smoker. On this particular evening, we were having dinner in a location outside her home state, a place where recreational marijuana is still banned. We both had just arrived in town only hours before. So when she pulled out her marijuana-filled pipe to smoke, I expressed surprise at how quickly she’d managed to get her drug of choice. Abby told me she had brought the drug with her on the plane and that this has been her habit for many years. “Fuck, I’d be too petrified to do that,” I said. “Aren’t you?” She replied, “Carl, look at me . . . I’m white, old, and rich. Who’s gonna fuck with me?”
“Touché” was all I could say. She was right. She succinctly described her white privilege in the drug context. “More power to her,” I thought. She recognized and exercised her privilege. Nothing wrong with that. Besides, what societal benefit is gained from arresting Abby for possessing personal-use amounts of marijuana? Absolutely none. She’s a responsible consumer and an upstanding citizen, a pillar of her community.
It would be ideal if we as a society extended this white privilege to all our citizens. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way, especially when it comes to the enforcement of drug laws. In fact, the privileges afforded to some are acquired at the expense of others. This phenomenon can be viewed as the inverse of white privilege—racial discrimination or racism. When I use these terms here, I simply mean an action that results in disproportionately unjust or unfair treatment of persons from a specific racial group. Malicious intent is not required. What is required is that the treatment be unjust or unfair and that such injustice is disproportionately experienced by at least one racial group.10
Black people are much more likely than their white counterparts to be arrested for drugs, even though both groups use and sell drugs at similar rates.11 Not only is this wrong, but it has created a situation where law-enforcement agencies suspect damn near every black person as a drug trafficker.
I travel extensively but dread having to go through customs in some countries because invariably I am grilled about whether I’m carrying drugs. I recall once traveling through the Toronto airport and being taken to a back room for further questioning, supposedly about my visit. I explained that I was headed to Thunder Bay to give a public lecture. But this wasn’t good enough. More interrogation followed, along with an examination of the contents on my computer. After what seemed to be an inordinately long period of time, I grew impatient and said, “Look, I’m a scientist . . . and a professor . . . and an author . . . Here’s a copy of one of my books.” The incredulous look and impish smile plastered across the face of this white Canadian customs officer told me she wasn’t impressed. “Just because you wrote a book,” she said, “doesn’t mean you’re not a drug dealer.” Being a black man traveling from one country to another was enough for me to be a suspected drug dealer, no matter that all the evidence I presented was consistent with whom I claimed to be.
I don’t know if this officer is a racist or not. I suspect she wouldn’t consider herself one; few people do. Still, these types of experiences have made me think a lot more deeply about what constitutes racism.
It’s easy to classify as racists people who acknowledge they willfully perpetrate racial discrimination. But who’s dumb enough to admit to being a racist, excluding self-proclaimed white supremacists?
And what about those who unknowingly participate in racial discrimination? The cop who was “just doing his job”? Or the well-meaning legislators who voted for the crack-powder laws that were enforced in a racially discriminatory manner? Are these people racist? From my perspective, this determination can only be made by assessing their response to reasonable evidence that their actions contribute to racial discrimination. If the cop and lawmaker unwittingly participated in racial discrimination but changed their behavior when the discrimination was brought to their attention, it would be inappropriate to label them as racists. We all make mistakes. On the other hand, if these individuals fail to take action after being presented with such evidence, then the label “racist” is appropriate.
The key is to keep the focus on people’s actions, on their behaviors, rather than to speculate about their motives. Trying to determine what’s in a person’s head or heart is a pointless distraction. It’s impossible to know, for certain, the heart’s inner secrets.
Similarly, it is not helpful to focus on “implicit bias” because such unconscious attitudes may or may not play a role in the act of racial discrimination. In other words, simply having an implicit bias does not mean a person will inevitably act on this bias in a racially discriminatory manner. Nor does it mean a specific act of racial discrimination was due to such bias. Placing attention on implicit bias— on a person’s thoughts, rather than on that person’s harmful acts—tends to obfuscate the issue. Such emphasis is frequently a device used to avoid addressing head-on what is obvious racism, such as that which occurs in drug-law enforcement.
On December 10, 1986, James Baldwin was the keynote speaker at the National Press Club luncheon. Just forty-four days earlier, the Anti–Drug Abuse Act went into effect. Baldwin took the opportunity to criticize the new legislation, referring to it as “a bad law.” He predicted that it would exacerbate racial discrimination and “only be used against the poor.” He also urged black politicians, specifically, to push for drug legalization on behalf of their constituents. Sixteen of the twenty Congressional Black Caucus members had voted in support of the tough new law.12
Back then, I was an airman in the U.S. Air Force stationed at Royal Air Force Fairford in Gloucestershire, England. I was a part of the base’s security police unit. I hadn’t always been a cop, nor did I want to be one. But on April 14, 1986, our country bombed Libya in retaliation for Libyan-sponsored terrorism against American soldiers and citizens. The KC-135 planes that provided aerial refueling for the bombers came from our base, so we were on high alert for counterattacks.
As part of the enhanced base-security measures, I was selected, much to my chagrin, to be a security police augmentee. In my new job, I patrolled the base with an M16 rifle, sometimes for sixteen hours straight. I hated this duty. But I did as I was told because I had taken an oath to obey the orders of my superiors and because I had vowed to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I didn’t think of myself as being particularly patriotic. I was only doing what was right. It was right just as not killing another human being is right. It was right just as not lying is right. It was right just as not taking drugs is right. It was right and it was simple.
Baldwin’s remarks, to my way of thinking, were wrong. I sat in quiet disbelief, listening intensely as he made his case. His suggestion that cops would seize the opportunity—provided by the new statute—to arrest black people selectively was hard to take. “If people don’t use or sell drugs,” I thought to myself, “then they won’t get arrested.” Even though, by this time in my life, I had been stopped by the police more than once for no other reason than my skin color, I was still too naive to appreciate fully that certain communities were overpoliced and subjected to unfair treatment by the police.
Baldwin’s dispassionate, nonjudgmental comments on both drugs and legalization were different from the dominant public narrative. That he didn’t condemn drugs seemed strange. His views were disconcerting. They certainly weren’t informed by the countless PSAs that cluttered the air with powerful antidrug warnings delivered by celebrities. “Smoking crack is like putting a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger” was the frightening message in a PSA that left an indelible impression on me. I worried that Baldwin’s recommendations would lead to more drugs and chaos in resource-poor neighborhoods like the one from which I came.
Baldwin’s views on drugs seemed irresponsible. I was perplexed and disappointed. He was one of the few thinkers I truly revered. His writings helped me to see that white Americans, as a group, were not my enemy, even if, on occasion, a few frustrated the fuck out of me. Baldwin’s words expressed this relationship with our white brothas and sistas eloquently: “I never really managed to hate white people, though god knows I have often wished to murder more than one or two.”13
I now know that Baldwin was right about drugs, just as he was right about so many other important issues. Enforcement of the crack-powder laws did, in fact, lead to rampant racial discrimination in arrests, prosecutions, and convictions. The effects of this abhorrent practice continue to reverberate to this very day. It would take me more than a decade to become aware of this injustice, even though several of my own friends and relatives had been arrested and had served time for violating this law.
This realization made me rethink my views about drugs and their regulation. I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but I once wholeheartedly believed that drugs destroyed certain black communities. This despite the fact that over the same period of time, I attended an inordinate number of social events hosted by white colleagues. The setting for such events was usually in white communities. And almost without fail, psychoactive substances—both legal and illegal— served as social lubricants. The availability of drugs abounds. I assure you, though, drugs have not destroyed these white people or their communities. The folks to whom I am referring are some of the most responsible and respectable people I know. They are scientists, politicians, educators, activists, entrepreneurs, artists, media personalities, and more. They are your children, your siblings, your parents, your grandparents. They are you . . . me. And they are drug users, albeit mostly closeted drug users.
So serving in the military didn’t cure me of my naive inherited wisdom about drugs. But I am grateful for having served because it was there that I first developed a profound appreciation for the three documents that gave birth to our nation—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
Of the three, I am inspired most by the powerful concepts articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Even though it is not law, the Declaration is the foundation upon which American democracy was built. This document guarantees each citizen three birthrights—“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”—that can’t be taken away. It proclaims each person’s right to live as they see fit, as long as they do not interfere with others’ ability to do the same. And it declares that governments are created “to secure these rights,” not to restrict them.
For more than twenty-five years, I’ve studied drugs, trying to understand how they affect the brain, mood, and behavior. I’ve also written extensively on drug policy. It took me many years to see that the concepts expressed in the Declaration have profound ramifications for drug policy. In fact, the Declaration defends an individual’s right to use drugs. Clearly, many people consume psychoactive substances “in the pursuit of happiness,” a right the government was established to secure, to protect. So why then is our current government arresting one million Americans each year for possessing drugs? Why are so many drug users hiding in the closet? This reality does not align with the spirit of the Declaration.
Nor does it align with how drug use was handled for most of American history. From the country’s inception through the early years of the twentieth century, Americans were free to alter their consciousnesses with the substances of their choice. A range of over-the-counter concoctions containing alcohol, cocaine, opioids, and other psychoactive drugs was readily available. Opium was the sought-after constituent in several general feel-good remedies, and cocaine served as the most important ingredient in tonics such as Coca Cola.14
Upstanding citizens openly used drugs to feel nice, to alter their consciousness. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was a long-term, avid drug user. He particularly appreciated the opium-based drugs for their mind-altering as well as medicinal effects.15 Sigmund Freud was perhaps the best-known proponent of cocaine use. He himself used it to improve his mood and increase his energy. Everyday people, too, enjoyed drugs such as cocaine and opioids without shame. In fact, the typical consumers of opioids were middle-aged white women. They bought opium or morphine from the local store and used the substances with few problems.16 This “allowing adults to be adults” attitude was soon to change.
After the American Civil War, Chinese workers were brought into the United States to help build the railroads. Some of them brought with them the practice of smoking opium. Opium dens, which were usually run by the Chinese (in China, the drug could be obtained and consumed freely), were increasingly frequented by white Americans. This intermingling inspired racial fear; numerous media reports followed claiming that opium use was widespread and that good, young white people were being corrupted in the dens. This excerpt from an 1882 report was typical: “The practice spread rapidly . . . Many women and young girls, as also young men of respectable family, were being induced to visit the dens, where they were ruined morally and otherwise.”17
Similarly, use of cocaine by black day laborers and other blue-collar workers was initially encouraged, as long as the use was in the service of accomplishing work tasks for whites. But then the situation changed as whites discovered that blacks, too, enjoyed cocaine recreationally for its euphoria- and confidence-inducing effects. Use by blacks was increasingly reported in a manner designed to evoke fear among the white majority. Countless articles exaggerated both the extent to which cocaine was used by blacks and the connection between their use of the drug and heinous crimes. Popular myths held that the drug made black men homicidal as well as exceptional marksmen. Perhaps the most outrageous claim was that the drug rendered this group unaffected by .32-caliber bullets. Incredibly, these ridiculous assertions were actually believed. They prompted some southern police forces to switch to a larger .38-caliber weapon in order to deal with the mythical black, cocainized superhuman.18
As concerns grew about the purported widespread drug use by despised groups, several states passed laws restricting access to opioids and cocaine, making them available only by prescription. Simply put, whites with means or access to a physician still could get their drugs of choice without running afoul of the law, but others no longer had such rights.
The federal government got involved, too, which was unheard of at the time. In 1914, Congress debated whether to pass the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, one of the country’s first forays into national drug legislation, which sought to tax and regulate the production, importation, and distribution of opium and coca products. Proponents of the law saw it as a strategy to improve strained trade relations with China by demonstrating a commitment to controlling the opium trade. Opponents, mostly from southern states, viewed it as an intrusion into states’ rights. They had prevented passage of previous versions.
Now, however, the law’s proponents had found an important scapegoat in their quest to get it passed: the mythical “Negro cocaine fiend,” which prominent newspapers, physicians, and politicians readily exploited. At congressional hearings, “experts” testified that “most of the attacks upon white women of the South are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain.” It worked. When the Harrison Act became law, proponents could thank the South’s fear of blacks for easing its passage.
It’s important to point out that the Harrison Act, like most state laws, did not explicitly prohibit the use of opioids or cocaine. These drugs remained readily available to those with social capital. For others, enforcement of the new law quickly became increasingly punitive. The law helped set the stage for passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting alcohol, in 1919 and, ultimately, for all our drug policy moving forward. As important, the racial rhetoric that laced those early conversations about drug use didn’t just evaporate; it endured and evolved, reinventing itself decade after decade, from reefer madness to crack babies.
I am concerned that today’s sensationalistic media coverage of the opioid crisis continues a long, awful tradition of exploiting ignorance and fear to vilify certain members of our society. In the process, civil liberties become collateral casualties as new, even more restrictive drug laws are passed.
As with previous “drug crises,” the opioid problem is not really about opioids. It’s mainly about cultural, social, and environmental factors such as racism, draconian drug laws, and diverting attention away from the real causes of crime and suffering. As you’ll discover throughout this book, there’s nothing terribly unique about the pharmacology of opioids that makes these drugs particularly dangerous or addictive. People have safely consumed them for centuries. And, trust me, people will continue to do so, long after the media’s faddish focus has faded, because these chemicals work.
Fatal overdose is a real risk, but the odds of this occurring have been overstated. It is certainly possible to die after taking too much of a single opioid drug, but such deaths account for only about a quarter of the thousands of opioid-related deaths. Contaminated opioid drugs and opioids combined with another downer (e.g., alcohol or a nerve-pain medication) cause many of these deaths.19 People are not dying because of opioids; they are dying because of ignorance.
Also, addiction to opioids is far less common than the scare stories suggest. We have been inundated with cherry-picked accounts that portray sympathetic white opioid addicts who developed addiction through no fault of their own. In reality, less than one-third of heroin users and less than one tenth of people prescribed opioids for pain will become addicted.20 I absolutely agree with the observation of Stephen King, the noted ex-drug user and renowned writer, that “beating heroin is child’s play compared to beating your childhood.”21
But unfortunately, despite the fact that much of the reporting on opioids is bullshit, the media coverage continues to be relentless. Even though little if any factually accurate information about drugs is presented, these attention-grabbing stories inform us that decent white folks are the real victims of this tragedy, and an “evil” drug such as heroin, fentanyl, oxycodone, or some other opioid is to be blamed. If not the drug itself, then something else—reckless doctors; degenerate, nonwhite drug pushers; or “big pharma”—is responsible for the suffering.
These messages haven’t been lost on politicians, law-enforcement officials, or anyone else not living under a rock. That is one reason why public officials, especially from those states where opioids are blamed for practically everything that ails them, have pushed for increased amounts of funding for opioid-addiction treatment. Even law-enforcement agencies now advocate moving beyond the arrest-first approach and are connecting users to treatment.
But the seemingly humane approach—providing treatment to all users—is only part of the picture. Multiple states have passed legislation that enhances penalties for opioid infractions. In some states, prosecutors have begun leveling murder charges against drug dealers, friends, acquaintances, or anyone suspected of facilitating the acquisition of drugs by someone who died from an overdose.22 At the federal level, a convicted person will receive a twenty-year mandatory-minimum prison sentence for distribution of heroin or fentanyl resulting in death or serious bodily injury.
The widespread support for this “be compassionate with some” and “get tough on others” approach never ceases to amaze me. Even popular journalist Malcolm Gladwell enthusiastically backed this course of action for dealing with the opioid situation. In a recent New Yorker piece, he wrote, “Manufacturers and distributors [of illegal opioids] belong in prison, and users belong in drug-treatment programs.”23 Gladwell falls right into the simple-minded trap of the “drug dealer bad and drug user good” dichotomy. I wonder if Gladwell believes anyone who drinks alcohol belongs in treatment. Does he think the occasional marijuana smoker should seek treatment as well?
In a real sense, the new “get tough on opioids” policies have been fueled by the mistaken perception that most illegal opioid dealers are black or Latino. Consider the remarks made by then Maine governor Paul LePage at a town hall forum in 2016. The governor reassured attendees that his beef was not with Mainers who merely “take drugs.” Bear in mind that Maine is the whitest state in the union. His outrage, LePage said, was aimed squarely at out-of-state drug dealers: “Guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty . . . they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home.” But, LePage warned, before these packs of mythical drug pushers head home, they usually “impregnate a young white girl.”24
Wow. This is America . . . in the twenty-first century. WTF.
Today, most Americans, even those who share LePage’s views, are not so stupid as to state these views aloud at a public gathering. Still, LePage’s comments, replete with racial paranoia and condescension toward white women, are not just sinisterly similar to the scare tactics used over a century ago; they also influence decisions on drug policy and enforcement, even now. Recent federal data back this claim: more than 80 percent of those convicted of heroin trafficking are black or Latino, even though most heroin sellers are white.25
The legend of heroic white public officials who vow to protect white women from drug-crazed black men is as old as the country itself. With each successive generation, the story is modified to accommodate the current reviled drug. But make no mistake about it, this legend is built on the dead and incarcerated bodies of countless black men. Baldwin once wrote, with chilling precision, “We made a legend out of a massacre.”26
RETURNING TO OUR classroom discussion . . . I reminded my students that whenever the public is gripped with fear, even if it’s trumped-up, the government responds by infringing upon fundamental liberties. Think about 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Of course, necessity is the excuse given for each infringement; it doesn’t matter whether it’s restricting free speech, banning gun ownership, or prohibiting heroin use. And let’s not deceive ourselves, there’s a whole lot of money made on publicizing the crisis that precipitated public fear as well as on enforcing the subsequent restrictions. Stories about the opioid crisis sell everything from newspapers to documentary films, and without drug-law violators to punish, a tremendous number of people would be unemployed.
If there isn’t vigorous and continuous resistance to governmental intrusions on freedom, the rights guaranteed by our noble founding documents will be steadily eroded. I reminded my students that it is their responsibility to fight each day for these rights. If they don’t, we will lose them.
The corrections officer’s abrupt, loud knock on the thick glass window signaled the end of our class period. My students stoically prepared to go back to being inmates. And I prepared to leave, as I did every Friday night, with the same sinking feeling that our warehousing of millions of Americans behind bars is simply vicious.
On my fifteen-minute silent walk from the prison to the Ossining Metro North Train Station, I pondered the same questions I did the previous week. Is it not cruel to teach my incarcerated students lofty ideals, knowing as I do that such ideals don’t apply at their current address, especially if this is the final address? Is it not cruel to link these students to a world that’s not available to them on the inside or outside? Am I not merely an accomplice to our cold-hearted system of justice that preys on the poor and the inconvenient? Am I just another liberal checking the “community-service box” to feel better about myself, like so many of the other volunteers I’ve come across?
On the train ride home, the mood was festive due to the many young, alcohol-intoxicated passengers headed into the city for a night of partying. Some were so kind as to offer me a drink. “That’s mighty American of you,” I said, “but I must decline because it’s not my drug of choice.” But equally important, my mind was still troubled, ruminating on my students and our discussion. As usual, these distressing thoughts stayed with me for several days, disrupting my sleep and depressing my mood. Opioids, such as heroin, help to lessen the anguish. They also come with the added benefit of producing blissfulness. It angers me that I can’t enjoy these opioids as freely as my fellow passengers enjoyed their alcohol. Prohibiting one’s pursuit of pleasure for baseless reasons is wrong and decidedly un-American.