![]() ![]() ![]() Public health-based alternatives to criminalization range from drug courts and other diversion programs to policies decriminalizing drug possession. įive years ago, the 193 member nations of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on drugs unanimously voted to recognize the need to approach substance use disorders as public health issues rather than punishing them as criminal offenses. It also harms the health of the incarcerated, their non-incarcerated family members, and their communities. This burden reinforces poverty by limiting upward mobility through impeded access to employment, housing, higher education, and eligibility to vote. According to another analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts, one in nine African American children (11.4%) and 1 in 28 Hispanic children (3.5%) have an incarcerated parent, compared to 1 in 57 White children (1.8%). Parents who are arrested can lose custody of their children, entering the latter into the child welfare system. This excess burden of felony drug convictions and imprisonment has radiating impacts on Black children and families. īesides leading to incarceration, an arrest for possession of even a small amount of cannabis-a much more common outcome for Black youth than White youth -can leave the individual with a criminal record that severely limits their future opportunities such as higher education and employment. It also raises the risk of early death from a wide variety of causes. Imprisonment leads to isolation, an exacerbating factor for drug misuse, addiction, and relapse. The damaging impacts of punishment for drug possession that disproportionately impact Black lives are wide ranging. Studies have shown that Black youth with opioid use disorder are significantly less likely than White peers to be prescribed medication treatment (42% less likely in one study, 49% in another ) and that Black patients with opioid use disorder are 77% less likely than White patients to receive the opioid addiction medication buprenorphine. These delays could not be attributed to socioeconomic status alone. Īlso, a 2018 study in Florida found that African Americans seeking addiction treatment experienced significant delays entering treatment (4–5 years) compared to Whites, leading to greater progression of substance use disorders, poorer treatment outcomes, and increased rates of overdose. Compared to White people, Black and Hispanic people are more likely to be imprisoned after drug arrests than to be diverted into treatment programs. While the opioid crisis has triggered some efforts to move away from punishment toward addressing addiction as a matter of public health, the application of a public health strategy to drug misuse remains unevenly distributed by race/ethnicity. These are just a few examples of the kinds of racial discrimination that have long been associated with drug laws and their policing. It is well known that during the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s, much harsher penalties were imposed for crack (or freebase) cocaine, which had high rates of use in urban communities of color, than for powder cocaine, even though they are two forms of the same drug. ĭuring the early years of the opioid crisis in this century, arrests for heroin greatly exceeded those for diverted prescription opioids, even though the latter-which were predominantly used by White people-were more widely misused. ![]() Of the 277,000 people imprisoned nationwide for a drug offense in 2013, more than half (56%) were African American or Latino even though together those groups accounted for about a quarter of the US population. Even though they use cannabis at similar rates, for instance, Black people were nearly four times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than White people in 2018. Although statistics vary by drug type, overall, White and Black people do not significantly differ in their use of drugs, yet the legal consequences they face are often very different. ![]()
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