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Last week, more than 400 motorists reached a settlement in their federal lawsuit against Eagle County, which will now have to pay them about $800,000.
They were driving along Interstate 70 in the mountains when the sheriff, in cooperation with federal enforcers, was running the High Country Drug Task Force in 1988-90.
The plan was to identify cars which fit a
drug-courier profile
and search those cars. Among
the criteria were fast-food wrappers on the floor, tinted
windows, license plates from known drug-source
states
and the race or ethnicity of the driver, based
on intelligence information
from various
sources.
Eagle County Sheriff A.J. Johnson said it was
unfortunate that racism became the issue
and that he
knew in my heart
that his task force was motivated
by anti-drug goals, not racism.
He's a talented man if he can tell the difference
between anti-drug goals
and racism.
In this
country, they're pretty much the same thing.
Go back less than a month to the uprisings in federal prisons over disparate sentencing laws.
If you're caught with five grams of crack cocaine, street value about $225, you face a mandatory five years. This happens mostly to African Americans; of the 14,000 federal prisoners serving time under the crack laws, 88.3 percent are black.
But if you're caught with 500 grams of the white stuff that white people like, powder cocaine, street value $50,000, then you could get off with probation. A DEA study in New York found that 71 percent of drug users, and 56 percent of drug sellers, are white. But 91 percent of the people doing time for drugs are black or Hispanic.
That should tell you something about the real purpose of drug enforcement, and if that's not persuasive, consider how substances came to be illegal in the first place.
We could start with one of the oldest drugs, opium,
which shows up as nepenthe
in Homer, where it is
supplied to young Telemachus by Queen Helen after she
returns to Sparta from Troy.
How did it come to be illegal in this country? Right after the Civil War, capitalists needed cheap labor to build a railroad east from California. They imported Chinese workers. After the railroad was built, they had no further use for the Chinese, who were in now in the way of progress.
In the words of Western historian Richard Wright,
those who attacked drugs ... took a significant second
step. They did not just define and attack `immorality';
they associated immoral activities with particular ethnic
and racial groups.... attacks on drugs and prostitution
became attacks on Chinese, who were supposedly drug addicts
... Such efforts were far more successful at punishing or
driving off minority groups than in eradicating the evils
under attack.
When Coca-Cola first appeared in 1888, it contained
the valuable tonic and nerve stimulant properties of the
coca plant
-- that is, cocaine.
That was fine until 1903, when one J.W. Watson of
Georgia wrote in the New York Tribune that Coca-Cola was
the cause of horrible crimes committed in the southern
states by colored people.
In 1914, the New York Times blamed cocaine for the
improved marksmanship of black men, citing the `cocaine
nigger' near Asheville [N.C.] who dropped five men dead in
their tracks, using only one cartridge for each.
Thus did cocaine become illegal. With marijuana, the
target group expanded beyond African Americans. In 1937, as
he persuaded Congress to outlaw a plant, Harry Anslinger
said most American pot smokers were Negroes and
Mexicans, and entertainers.
Colorado had outlawed marijuana in 1917, with
legislators citing the excesses of Pancho Villa's army,
supposedly hopped up on marijuana. One history continues
that The Colorado Legislature felt the only way to
prevent an actual racial bloodbath ... was to stop
marijuana.... With the excuse of marijuana the whites could
now use force and rationalize their violent acts of
repression.
During this same era of reform,
Prohibition was
adopted, generally after lurid propaganda aimed at
German-Americans and their beer during World War I.
Earlier national prohibition efforts, aimed largely at
keeping Irish Catholics in their place, had failed, perhaps
because the United States never went to war against
Ireland, and thus had no national security
rationale.
Move to more recent times, and note how quickly LSD became illegal because it was associated with another despised group -- protesters against the Vietnam War.
In fact, I am unaware of any drug law in this country
based on anything so mundane as honest science,
constitutional rights or life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness.
Our drug laws have always been crafted by one group in order to keep other groups in their place. Often the group definition is racial.
So if Sheriff Johnson, or any other public official, is sincere about avoiding racism in law enforcement, he'll quit enforcing drug laws.
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