Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1988

Jered Croom SOWK 534 Midterm Prof. Reina October 6, 2012 A. The United States has declared war on drugs. This is a war that has been fought on many levels and in many places. The Whitehouse released statistics that state, “anywhere from 52 percent (Washington, DC) to 80 percent or more (Chicago and Sacramento) of male arrestees tested positive for the presence of at least one drug at the time of their arrest” (http://www. whitehouse. gov/ondcp/criminal-justice-reform).

This information gives some insight into the pervasiveness of the presenting problem. Drug addiction is an epidemic among those being arrested. Incarceration has been the “big stick” of numerous administrations when it comes to fighting the drug war. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 enacted new federal laws governing how we deal with drugs in the country. These guidelines were the logical extension of other popular draconian measures from several states to include New York. Among the elements of the Act is mandatory sentencing.

This tool has made the prosecution of non violent drug offenders the “third rail” of our modern society. There are few politicians that want to be seen as going easy on crime, but this hyper incarceration in America has led us to lead the world in incarcerated individuals. This antiquated idea of how the law looks at addiction and the people who experience it has led to an untenable situation in our country. Traditionally there has always been a punitive approach to treatment of addiction. Morality laws were pervasive in early America.

The three strike laws have served to “feed the beast” in regards to filling prisons on the state and federal level. The prison population in this country has exploded. According to the Department of Justice in 2010 there were over 1. 6 million people incarcerated in the U. S. (http://bjs. ojp. usdoj. gov/index. cfm? ty=tp&tid=11). In this exploration we will look at how the phenomenon of mandatory sentencing and other components of the Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1988 have impacted America economically and socially.

The United States has a history of using laws to enact social control. The first notion of America using laws to control certain populations is in 1875. It was in this year that the United States passed its first drug law. It was in San Francisco, it was called the anti-opium den ordinance of 1875 (Reinerman, 157). This was a thinly veiled measure to disenfranchise Chinese immigrants brought to America to labor on the railroad system and gold mines of the west. The law was set to not allow the labor force to gain power to negotiate better wages and working conditions.

If we look even further there are other examples of this; the Temperance movement was an attempt at Protestants to marginalize the growing Catholic population in many urban centers during the industrialization of America. Gusfield states that, “temperance itself suggests a solution consonant with the dominance of the group and the concern with injustice and suffering. If the lower classes and the immigrants will acquire the habits and social codes of the native middle classes, their problems will be solved” (1955, 7).

The recurring theme of economic suppression in these two examples speaks to the insidious nature of social engineering through social movements and more codified methods. A predecessor of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 were the Rockefeller Drug Laws enacted in New York State and it had an immediate and sweeping effect on the population of New York. “In the period between 1974 and 2002, the NY State prison population rose by almost 500%” (Drucker, 2002). This law was developed to deal with the rise in drug use and crimes among New Yorkers.

Fear of crime and pervasiveness of racism in it’s enforcement has come together in the form of policy for New York State and the nation. There are many implications of “locking up” this many fathers, mothers, and sisters, a generation is disenfranchised. We are currently in an election and all of the above mentioned Americans are felons and thusly cannot vote unless they make application to have their rights reinstated. It also makes finding employment a truly daunting task.

It is helpful to paint a picture of the country before the Act was put into place. Manning Marable writes of an America gripped by the crack epidemic, “This is the new manifestation of racism in which we see a form of social control existing in our communities, the destruction of social institutions, and the erosion of people’s ability to fight against the forms of domination that continuously try to oppress them” (2004,p. 162). America was at a crossroads and people turned to the government for leadership and guidance.

What the government produced would change the very landscape of every major city in the United States. C. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 contains a myriad of provisions that speak to how the United States will deal with illicit drug sale and use. Among these provisions are Mandatory sentencing guidelines: Subtitle L: Serious Crack Possession Offenses – Amends the Controlled Substances Act to increase the criminal penalties with respect to persons convicted for the possession of a mixture or substance containing cocaine base.

Subtitle N: Sundry Criminal Provisions- Amends penalty provisions of the Controlled Substances Act to impose a mandatory term of life imprisonment without release with respect to violators convicted for a third felony drug offense. -Amends the Controlled Substances Act to apply mandatory minimum sentencing provisions to offenses involving the distribution of five grams or less of marijuana to persons under age 21. (H. R. 5210, 1988) There are too many provisions of this Act to list in this paper, but the above sections offer a barometer of the intention of the Act and that is punitive.

There are those who see this rigid stance as a step in the right direction. One of those people was President Ronald Reagan who spoke these words about the work his wife Nancy Reagan did to combat drug abuse with her “Just Say No” program, “for 8 years she’s led the fight to not only rid our society of drugs but banish any lingering tolerance of the false image that drugs are somehow “cool” or “hip. ” As a nation we now acknowledge what Nancy has been saying over the past several years — that drugs give a false high.

They feel good only long enough to weave a web of addiction. And once trapped, the user is drawn into an existence from which nothing good could come” (1988). He spoke these words right before he signed the Anti Drug Abuse Act into law. There is some validity to this argument. The popular media has glorified drug and alcohol use for that matter for many years. There are other voices that see this phenomenon with a different perspective. As evidenced in the video, “Breaking Point” that spoke of prison overcrowding. The correction officer union had a vested interest in locking any prison reform due to their constituency being employed and received extremely high wages with the overcrowding of prisons and new construction of facilities. It also highlighted the many people (2007). Prisons are a growth industry and when the commodity are people it becomes problematic to have a good return on investment. The video showed some very good vocational programs that were fiscally impossible to roll out to the general population due to their prohibitive cost. The racial implications in the enforcement of federal drug laws cannot be ignored.

Mauer writes that, “The number of federal prosecutions for crack offenses remains substantial, and as we have seen, the overall number of people in federal prison for a drug offense rose by 32. 7% from 1999 to 2005. Racial disparities persist as well, with African-Americans constituting more than 80% of the people convicted of a federal crack cocaine offense” (2009, p. 15). The distinction made in powder cocaine and crack cocaine has led to a pointed push to criminalize urban use of the same drug with vast differences in punishment.

The impact of the Anti Drug Abuse Act has had far reaching results. In a report to Congress from 2002 it recognizes that the gap in punishment for crack cocaine and powder cocaine affected African Americans disproportionately. “The overwhelming majority of offenders subject to the heightened crack cocaine penalties are black, about 85 percent in 2000” (Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy, 2002). The exploded population of the United States prison system is one impact that touches every segment of the country. Angela Davis writes about the privatization of United States prisons, “as prisons proliferate in U. S. society, private capital has become emeshed in the punishment industry” (2004,570).

This image of American inmates becoming a commodity to be wheeled and dealed beckons to a time long gone. In the years following the end of slavery up until 1942 there was a convict lease system was prevalent in the South. Incarceration as a business is an important spin off of mandatory sentencing. The incarceration rate lowering means less business for certain companies which impacts every American due to advocacy of several business industries to strengthen sentencing guidelines and ensure there is a future workforce to maximize their profit. Since 1991 the rate of violent crime in the United States has fallen by about 20 percent, while the number of people in prison or jail has risen by 50 percent” (Schlosser, 1998, p. 5). The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 does not solve the prevailing issue of drug addiction in criminals. It is somewhat ironic that due to its “success” in capturing non violent low level criminals there is no money to spend on treatment of these offenders which would hopefully interrupt the grim cycle of recidivism due to ongoing addiction.

The cost of incarcerating this population has exploded. It has become a significant part of the economic revitalization of many areas. The community of Crescent City, Ca felt the squeeze of a waning manufacturing base until, “the California Department of Corrections built $277. 5 million Pelican Bay State Prison. The prison has provided 1500 jobs an annual $50 million, and a budget of over $90 million” (Gonzales,2011,p. 1726). Communities all over America wrestle with the dilemma of hoping for continued spiral in regards to incarceration.

What looks like a boon to local economies is a blow to the people who have to sacrifice their freedom to feed this burgeoning economy. The future of American drug policy lies within expanding our desire to see addiction as a medical issue and not solely a legal and moral issue. We have painted the non violent drug offender as the impetus of the decay of urban centers. Those who fall into the web of the legal system find themselves in a very precarious situation. “Over 90% of drug cases are plea bargained directly with the prosecutors and do not involve jury trials to determine guilt or innocence” (Drucker, 2002, p. ). To reverse our descent into mass incarceration we have to accomplish several goals. One of them is to ensure that not only those who can afford expensive legal counsel, the aforementioned 90% have the ability to fight legal cases that lead to a lifetime of marginalization. There are many restrictions when you have been convicted of a drug crime. Among these restrictions are you may not receive federal student loans, you have additional obstacles when applying for public housing and of course the social stigma attached to having a criminal record.

In my conversations with men and women who live with these convictions their biggest complaint is that every job application asks them have you been convicted of a crime felony or misdemeanor. When they respond affirmatively they are often not allowed to continue with the hiring process and others who have lied are fired when the truth is revealed. Anderson writes very poignantly, “rejected for employment, they are left without money or resources and have been even more limited possibilities. Too often, they resort to the underground economy of hustling, drugs and street crime” (2009, p. 6). This was evidenced in the video as the man paroled he found himself boxed in by his criminal record and lack of resources. This is a point that needs to be sured up in our drug policy. The Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1988 brought addiction to the forefront in America, but it approaches it from a punitive angle. One of the positive aspects of the Act was that it gave birth to Drug Courts. Drug Court does not “fix” the problem, but it does speak to the dynamic nature of the drug epidemic.

There are two major points to bolster the effectiveness of Drug Courts:

In a sample of 17,000 drug court graduates nationwide within one year of Graduating from the program, only 16% had been rearrested and charged with a felony offense, approximately one-third the level observed in drug offenders not participating in a drug court. Second they are cost effective. Approximately $250 million in incarceration costs are saved each year in New York State alone by diverting 18,000 non violent drug offenders into treatment (Levinthal, 2008, p. 375). The Drug Court movement is a step in the right direction, but there is still the social stigma associated with addiction that makes the road ahead difficult.

If you remove the addicted criminal from the streets they will not commit crimes in that community, but where is the tipping point of where you incarcerate more people than you educate or employ in that neighborhood. Where does that road lead us as a nation when many states will have a budget where it spends exponentially more on incarceration than education. We are in the dawn of a new age in regards to how many large urban centers deal with the issue of what role does the law have in adjudicating addicted criminals. The cost factor alone has proven we were on a path that could not be sustained.

A New York judge wrote in a commentary that, “if New York requires that treatment be considered as an alternative to incarceration, it will drastically change how drug laws are enforced. Instead of employing a system where incarceration is the default sentence for first time offenders and treatment is the exception, treatment should be the primary sentence for first time offenders” (Mancuso, 2010,p. 1580). It was a refreshing change in rhetoric after reading these words. This sentiment is rising around the country as cost of incarceration rises and it has even become a matter for national security.

Who will fight our next war, who will fill the sensitive jobs of the national security machine. There is no other way to state the fact that we are a nation united not only in our creed and national tie, we are a community that is struggling to right the ship and sail into a new dawn where we don’t punish people with the illness of addiction. We are nearly to a point on the medical side of the equation where there are medications that offer treatment for addiction. The Anti Drug Abuse Act of 2008 is a monumental and dynamic piece of policy. It touches all facets of life in America.

In coming years we will see how the new understandings we have of the disease model of addiction will amend this Act and how the fiscal reality of housing millions of Americans has taken a toll on not only the economy, but the soul of our nation.

References

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