In 1986, lawmakers rushed to find an incarceration-based response and came up with the â100 to 1â ratio. This meant that 5 grams of crack would trigger a mandatory minimum sentence of five years, the same amount of prison time as 500 grams of powder cocaine. These disproportionate sentences hit communities of color particularly hard, removing large numbers of primarily young black and brown men from the community and placing them in jail for long periods of time. Despite the often openly racial terms that the crack epidemic was presented within media, perhaps most telling was a statistic reported as the 100 to 1 ratio was rolled back to 17 to 1 in 2009âwhile only 25 percent of crack users are black, African Americans account for 82 percent of convictions for crack possession.
The concentration of the current wave of opioid abuse centers around white, uneducated men. In March, President Trump held a listening session at the White House, where he signed an executive order creating a presidential commission to combat opioid addiction. âAddiction is a disease, and no life is disposable. We can help people by giving them appropriate treatment,â New Jersey Governor and commission leader Chris Christie said at the time.
Certainly those impacted by these substances, then and now, deserved compassion and respect. The treatment-based approach appears to recognize that the incarceration-based strategy of the 1980s was perhaps not the best way to go.
If thatâs so, then it feels to me something like the Tuskegee experiments transposed onto contemporary drug policyâthe lives of the guinea pigs sacrificed so that we can get it right the next time around. One epidemic presented as black and urban (the guinea pigs), another as white and rural (the humans). I wonder, 10 years down the road, will there be an opioid âDark Allianceâ-type series of investigative articles? âHighwayâ Ricky Ross, anyone?