Does our country's treatment of drug epidemics discriminate by race or class?

The media frequently promotes the narrative that black and white drug offenders are treated differently. The frequently echoed trope is that the government locks up the urban, black crack dealer and throws away the key, but lets off the white, suburban powder cocaine dealer with a slap on the wrist. Eric J. Miller, an associate professor at the Saint Louis University of Law, has argued that the growing movement towards drug courts can help reduce racial disparities in the justice system.

Was there really any difference historically in the methods our government has used to police black and white drug offenders? Does racial prejudice still exist in our judicial system as it pertains to drug offenders? And is the adoption of the individualistic model of drug courts a positive step for the rehabilitation of drug offenders?

Much has been written about the different sentencing schemes for cocaine and crack. Cocaine dealers tend to be white and crack dealers are overwhelmingly black. According to many in the media, the disparity in the sentencing schemes is clear evidence of racism.

However, another explanation exists for this disparity. Cocaine use is associated with suburban and upper class communities. Crack use predominately occurs in poor, urban communities. Although the media has concluded that race is to blame for sentencing disparities, class is an equally likely source.

The treatment of methamphetamine users provides an example of this dichotomy. Scholars admit that meth “has been constructed as a white drug used in poor rural communities, one that denotes declining white status and cultural anxieties about white social position.” Unlike cocaine, the meth epidemic was dramatized in a fashion similar to crack. The common thread between the disparity in the treatment of the different drugs is that meth and crack are associated with the poor, while cocaine is associated with the upper and middle classes.

The distinctive treatment of meth and non-medical use of prescription stimulants is another example of the class dichotomy in the treatment of drug users. Students and professionals often use stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin to gain an advantage in the classroom or workplace, and they do so with little stigma. Like meth users, abusers of stimulants are predominantly white. The difference in stigma is a result of the class disparity between the two groups. Students and professionals are often members of the middle and upper classes; they are typically suburbanites and city dwellers. Meth users are stereotypically poor and rural.

Scholars might be on to something when they note the difference between the media treatment of the heroin and hillbilly heroin (OxyContin) epidemics. However, the reaction is based on OxyContin addiction existing in suburban, middle class America rather than its prevalence amongst whites. It’s not only hillbilly heroin, but also high school heroin, soccer mom heroin, and professional heroin.

The treatment poor rural drug offenders and poor urban drug offenders receive is similar from both their communities and the criminal justice system. While a physician might identify with a suburban OxyContin addict, she looks upon poor white rural addicts with the same distant suspicion they would a poor black urban addict.

Vermont has one of the highest rates of opiate addiction in the country. Medical treatment and judicial enforcement in the state have become increasingly intertwined. One Vermont doctor stated that his recommended treatment for opiate addiction is:

Suboxone (a drug that manages opiate withdrawal) “combined with ‘tight control… put an ankle bracelet on them and tightly monitor them… If you mess up, you go to jail. Folks do best when there are consequences.”

Another doctor insisted:

“that the criminal justice oversight of a sick person is not a contradiction, but a mechanism to ensure sorely needed ‘accountability.”

Drug courts replace a parole officer with a judge and seek to channel drug offenders into treatment programs rather than incarceration. With an emphasis on “a race- and class-neutral approach focused on individual responsibility,” drug courts have changed a prior judicial emphasis on addressing “the social factors of race, poverty, and social circumstances.” This approach replaces race with responsibility as the major issue facing minority addicts.

Although a race neutral determination is ideal, drug courts might have unintentional racial impacts. Drug courts often look for involvement from family, friends and the community. Because drug courts often place the offender back in the community in lieu of jail the environment the offender is in becomes paramount.

Since drug courts impose conditions of treatment and employment on offenders, scholars have argued that drug courts confer greater benefits on white offenders who often have greater resources and more stable home lives. However, once again, this can be said for both class and race equally. Drug usage rates in poor, rural counties are higher than average, just as they are in poor, urban communities.

The media historically associates certain drugs with ethnic minorities to influence policy. Examples include “Reefer Madness” and Mexicans, the Chinese and opium, and Blacks with crack. However, the most recent, widely publicized drug epidemics in the country have been focused on poor, rural whites: the meth epidemic of the 1990s and today’s opioid epidemic.

Rather than focusing on the race of the group caricatured by the media to illustrate wide-ranging drug abuse, policymakers should focus on the class of offenders. Moving forward, lawmakers should look at strategies to reform drug courts to account for the different class backgrounds of offenders. Providing greater resources for impoverished offenders and granting more leniency to offenders whose poverty makes it difficult to check every box of their release conditions would provide greater equality between classes.

That way the black urban meth user and the white rural crack user can have the same opportunity for rehabilitation as the limousine cocaine user.

To learn more about about policing opioid abuse in rural communities, check out Professor Pruitt’s post over at the Legal Ruralism blog. For a more detailed look at drug abuse in rural America, check out this entry. To learn more on the rural drug trade, click here. For a detailed dive into the rising rates of rural opioid use check out this post.