Abstract
This essay argues that race and class influence drug laws through politicized means. Crack-cocaine and methamphetamine production, sales, and use were met with criminalizing efforts because of their respective association with African Americans and poor Whites, two groups that have been differentially identified as threatening to hegemonic power. Despite some similarities in criminalizing outcomes, specific reactions differed. Crack-cocaine’s publicized connection to violence resulted in extensive surveillance, arrest, and imprisonment. Attention surrounding methamphetamine, however, often linked the drug to safety hazards, including property explosions, physical distortions of users, and the pathology of un(der)employment. As a result, policing the methamphetamine problem increased detentions but not to the same extent as crack-cocaine. I contend that the current opioid “epidemic” has received more medicalized reactions due to opiate’s association to middle- and upper-class Whites—social groups that are traditionally protected. I conclude by proposing that despite nuanced and unique consequences of criminalizing and medicalizing responses, each reflects a neoliberalist agenda that seeks to diffuse social threat and reinforce prevailing inequalities.
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Notes
The passage of the 100 to 1 Rule mirrors the earlier-passed Harrison Act, which linked cocaine use—then in its powder form—to African Americans and some poor Whites. Science and public media campaigns depicted African Americans as threatening white society, especially through the rape and coercion of White women, after drinking cocaine-laced cola (Carstairs 2000). The consequence of the Harrison Act was increased lynchings of African Americans, greater voter restrictions, and the passage of laws designed to segregate African Americans from Whites.
These accounts were colloquially known as the “This is Your Face on Meth,” which reclaimed “This is Your Brain on Drugs” scare tactic commercials used in the 1980s. Chambliss (2001) notes how this imagery equivocated working-class, rural Whites to poor, urban minorities. As such, both of these media campaigns were designed to incite anxiety and terror of illicit drug use among the public in an effort to mobilize support for punitive drug-related policies.
Ironically, the CMCA is cited as the reason that smaller, “kitchen” laboratories arose (Chitwood et al. 2009).
In the present paper I discuss the opioid crisis as generally encountering more medicalized responses than crack-cocaine and methamphetamine; however, I acknowledge that some areas, groups, and individuals still confront criminal punishment for opioid (mis)use. I discuss some of these patterns in subsequent sections of the paper.
Although recognizing similarities in the socio-political consequences of drug “wars” and drug “epidemics,” the latter provoke a more medicalized, and thus legitimized and less culpable, response than drug wars. In other words, when drug epidemics are declared, medical monitoring occurs, which requires establishing programs and services designed to treat and resolve drug-related issues. Here, criminal control measures are not primary responses. Instead, treatment and symptom management are emphasized. While I acknowledge medicalization as promoting a form of surveillance and control, I posit it as a process unique to strict punitive, criminalized responses where the criminal control apparatus maintains authority over punishment.
For example, African Americans are less likely to consider physicians trustworthy due to historic racism in medical practices (Washington 2008).
In addition, individual medical personnel annually contribute approximately $5.5 million to candidates supporting pro-medicine policy (Makinson 1992).
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Dollar, C.B. Criminalization and Drug “Wars” or Medicalization and Health “Epidemics”: How Race, Class, and Neoliberal Politics Influence Drug Laws. Crit Crim 27, 305–327 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-018-9398-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-018-9398-7