The Political Inquirer

I just finished reading the 69-page document from the Human Rights Watch titled “Targeting Blacks: Drug Law Enforcement in the United States.”  Unless you are a sucker for punishment or doing a research paper, which I am, this is one of those lengthy essays a condensed version would probably give you all the information you wanted to know.  In a nutshell, the document spells out, with twenty-four tables and charts, the disparity between the black and white populations for drug related admissions into prison.  I am not refuting the figures, since the numbers can be easily checked, but I did leave the document and my research paper with a few things that made me scratch my head.

My thought process is not about race and again I am not attempting to refute the numbers, but I question the presentation of the material.  For example, not until page-41 will the the reader learn that drug use among whites are higher (49-percent white, 42.9-percent black) for 12 year old kids and up, according to a survey conducted by SAMHSA.  However, unless you read the footnotes, you would miss that the survey “excluded high drug using populations” and does not differentiate between the one time experimenter and avid user.  Furthermore, the document states little research has been applied to the demographics of dealers, but bases further statistics on “data that suggests” the number of dealers are comparable to the number of users, meaning there are more white users and dealers.  Even though I am not a social scientist, I am pretty certain coming up with solid numbers for users and dealers would be pretty difficult given the nature of the offense, but given the claim one might expect some solid information.

I am not certain of the problems or solutions concerning drugs.  Do we take the liberal view and have more programs to rehabilitate offenders or the conservative view of merely locking people up?  Do we side with the libertarian principals that would lead to legalization or decriminalization for drug use?  I do not really know, but I would like to see research that does not exclude portions of the information and bases statistics on facts and not suggestions.

All the information was taken from the Human Rights Watch website and the document mentioned throughout can be located at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/us0508/us0508web.pdf