Last month The Future of Freedom Foundation held our second conference on ending the drug war at one of America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) — Florida A&M University. The conference was hosted by the ACLU chapters at the law schools of FAMU, Barry University, and the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Our previous drug war conference at a HBCU was at Morgan State University in Baltimore.
Before the evening conference at FAMU, we had an informal social featuring free pizza and soft drinks. The program was kicked off by a welcome from FAMU law school student Maryjane Cooper, an ACLU representative on campus, who did a fantastic job organizing and promoting the conference. A student then introduced me and I delivered some introductory remarks about freedom, the drug war, and the racism of the drug war.
We had three main speakers: Ken Williams, a former homicide detective with the Boston police department who now works for LEAP, the organization of former law-enforcement officials that is committed to bringing the drug war to an end. He was followed by Kassandra Frederique, who works for the Drug Policy Alliance, one of the premier organizations devoted to ending bringing an end to the drug war. The third speaker was Laurence Vance, longtime policy adviser for FFF and author of FFF’s great new ebook The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom. Laurence delivered the libertarian case for ending the drug war. We then had a panel discussion which revolved around questions from the audience.
The entire program was videotaped, and you can watch it here. We are having the videos of the talks separated out and will post them soon on our website.
Some people thought that by enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, racial bigotry would be brought to an end in the United States. That notion — that the force of law could eradicate racial prejudices in people — was always a ridiculous one. Even though that law brought racial segregation (which was a government program) to an end, it was inevitable that racial bigots would find other ways to exercise their prejudices.
In that regard, the drug war has proven to be an excellent program for racial bigots. From the standpoint of a bigot, it’s actually better than segregation was. Segregation kept whites and blacks apart but at least left blacks living in the community. The drug war has proven to be much more effective from the standpoint of a bigot because this government program removes blacks entirely from the community and relocates them into state and federal penitentiaries. The drug war scandal in Tulia, Texas, several years ago especially comes to mind.
By now, most everyone knows that the adverse consequences of the drug war have fallen disproportionately on blacks. They are the ones who are most likely to be stopped by police officers, especially the bigoted ones, and searched, patted down, humiliated, insulted, abused, framed, and arrested. That’s not to say, of course, that all cops are bigoted. They’re not. But it is to say that there are bigoted cops, and the drug war is their best friend because it enables them to legally exercise their bigoty and even get thanked and praised for trying to “win” the drug war.
We’ve all heard about the problem with mass incarceration — that the United States, which prides itself on supposedly not being a police state, jails more people than any other nation, including the communist and totalitarian ones. Blacks represent a disproportionate percentage of the prison population. That’s because of the drug war. And when blacks get out of prison, a felony conviction prevents them from voting. Segregation wasn’t able to accomplish that.
Oh sure, there are plenty of whites who have gotten ensnared by the drug war. But the bigot looks at them much as U.S. officials look at innocent people who are killed by their massive bombs that targeting a “terrorist.” They view them as “collateral damage.” What matters is getting the “terrorist” and the African American. The fact that others have to die or suffer in the process is considered an unfortunate side effect. Anyway, when whites do get snared by the drug war, lots of them get the benefit of good defense lawyers, sweet plea bargains, deferred adjudications (which enables them to retain their voting rights), and mandatory rehab programs. Blacks get felony convictions and long terms in the penitentiary.
In the early days of the drug war, it was logical for black leaders to support drug laws. They saw the devastating effects that drugs were having on blacks, especially the youth. They figured that harsh law enforcement was the way to protect the African American community.
After decades of failure, death, destruction, corruption, and racial bigotry, however, no one can rationally believe that the drug war has been a positive thing for blacks or anyone else in society, with the exception of drug lords, drug gangs, and drug-war bureaucracies, all of which thrive on drug illegality. In fact, as the libertarian Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman pointed out in 1990 in an Open Letter to Drug Czar Bill Bennett, which we reprinted in one the first issues of our monthly journal Future of Freedom, crack cocaine, which devastated inner city blacks, was developed as a direct consequence of the war on drugs.
The drug war is teetering. Over the years, more and more people have come to recognize its evil and destructiveness. If African Americans will lead the way, we can bring this horrific, immoral, and racially bigoted government program to an end. That’s why FFF is aiming to take our End the Drug War message to more Historically Black Colleges and Universities.