Crack Is Not A "Black Drug" - The Impact Of Focusing Upon Government Sanction

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Meet "Chronic" - the drug dealer in the first video.
Chronic doesn't give a damn about the impact of the drugs that he sells to the people who live in his community. He only cares about the money that he can make by acting as the middle man for his drugs. He sees the value of getting more people addicted to his drugs because this means more money into his own pockets.

There are competing theories regarding how to address the scourge of drugs and/or balance enforcement with the consideration of how punishment impacts communities.

The reduction of the crack mandatory sentences is seen as a victory, a step toward justice by some people. As usual they point to a secondary indictment (Racism) as a means of undercutting the policy and its motivations. Of course, unless you believe that "Crack is a Black drug" - their outrage makes little sense. Their evidence that more Blacks are locked up for crack possession than are Whites merely proves that, despite the known risks and addictive results - the RISK are still made to use crack instead of powder or other intoxicants.

I see this policy having a few important impacts upon the community that people claim are being damaged by the "racist" prosecution of crack over powder. (White people use powder more).

A person who has the lack of character and thus sells drugs within his own community will either continue to see these drugs with a reduced sentence dangling over his head OR he will merely find some other criminal activity to engage in. Recently the "smash and grab robbery" has employed those who would have otherwise been drug dealers.

The main failure of this strategy is that it does nothing to address the need for employment and the lack of skills that many of these people have. Drug dealing is both a line of employment and a choice to go for the 'big money' as they turn down low waged jobs that they qualify for. Ironically most of the street level drug dealers don't make much money. He might have small evidence of money per his clothing, jewelry or other accouterments but he remains poor, uneducated, unskilled and a predator in his community.

Having just toured the city of Detroit it is clear that many of the employment opportunities for the unskilled laborers have disappeared. The increasing costs of labor and the regulations that have been added to the "consumers of labor" caused many of them to shutdown, move to a more competitive American location or shift their production to another nation. In particular cars that were going to sold in a particular region was made there instead of being exported from what is now called the "Rust Belt" region.

If we consider the drug dealer as an EMPLOYEE with multiple options if he is developed in a certain way then it is also true that we are not debating enough about:

• The failure of the public schools to prepare him
• The failure of the community eco-system/families from which he comes from to regulate his behavior
• The failure of the local economic policies to retain their base of "consumers of labor", instead often treating them in a hostile manner

My main criticism about the Progressive is that they choose to cherry pick and render indictments instead of fielding an all encompassing set of solutions that also respect core issues like property rights and reasonable taxation below the point of confiscation.   Opening the doors of the jail cells in pursuit of their brand of justice while ignoring the quality of the schools that they now control is not a solution.  The previous stances against the tired claims of "family values" by the conservatives should not be mistaken as proof that they have a community/relationship management strategy of their own that delivers outcomes.

Instead government and corporations are often the sources of the indictment.   I am not against the 18 to 1 compromise.  I am only making the case that THIS AIN'T THE PROBLEM and thus it is not going to provide the fix that many (like leftist judicial activist Michelle Alexander) claim it will have.

I would be more impressed if someone assembled a program to develop construction arts skills by targeting the grossly abandoned houses in parts of Detroit and Atlanta that I have recently seen.  Take the "Habitat for Humanity" model yet make it into a skills training program that is also revitalizing the community and ridding it of its inventory of collapsing buildings.