Racial Discrimination: Drug Laws And Sentence Disparities

Racial Discrimination: Drug Laws and Sentence Disparities
The crime this essay will be on is racial injustice. The main point I want to focus on is how drugs laws came into effect because of certain races. With specific races being linked to different drugs, laws also came into effect. The movie “The House I live In” by Eugene Jarecki, was my inspiration for this essay. It depicted racial discrimination, and how certain drugs over time became associated with certain races. Many drugs that are illegal today, have not always been. Almost all of these drugs were sold commercially and used by many upper-class whites during the early to mid nineteenth century. Drugs were only an issue for the upper-class because they were the only ones able to

Smoking opium was a custom for the Chinese workers after a day of work, comparable to workers today that go out for a drink after a day of work. With opium smoking came opium dens; this was where people would culminate to smoke opium, gamble, and prostitution took place there as well. Opium was now considered to be a harmful drug by the public, and they began to associate opium with the Chinese, “Public opinion toward opium was primarily based on ‘racial hatred’ by mainstream society toward Chinese immigrants. Newspapers of the time carried lurid tales of crime and debauchery in opium dens. All these accounts portrayed the Chinese in a negative light” (Hogan 40). The public became fearful of the effects of opium and the Chinese, “In 1875, the San Francisco municipal authority passed a city ordinance forbidding the smoking of opium. However, the actual importing and selling of the drug were not included in the ordinance as criminal acts” (Hogan 41). They prohibited individuals to not smoke opium but did nothing to the individuals producing and importing the drug. This clearly did not end the problem, opium was still allowed to be produced and imported wherever. This only

Cocaine’s effect provided its users with energy and it became popular among African American workers. Cocaine’s effect was widely known by many, “Some southern labor bosses were even known to provide their black laborers with cocaine to increase their endurance and productivity” (Morgan). Even though cocaine was widely used, there was still a double standard, “Cocaine provided by whites to blacks under the pretense of increased economic productivity was seen as forgivable; however, cocaine used by blacks for recreational purposes was an indication of moral depravity” (Hogan 44). During this time period, racial tension between Caucasians and African Americans was at an all time high. During this time, African American families worked on plantations as slaves for Caucasian landowners. Many whites began to fear black men that used cocaine because of it’s side effects; they viewed blacks on cocaine as more dangerous and harmful. Rumors of black men on cocaine began to spread, “Anecdotal accounts often told of superhuman strength, violent criminal acts, and ghastly sexual offenses perpetrated by blacks against their white counterparts. Cocaine became associated with aggression, murder, rape, and African American males” (Booth). Whites were spreading false stories of black men on cocaine inducing fear in others. Due to this fear, many people began to take