I'm going to repeat the question, how can any study know who commits drug offenses vs how many are convicted; when the definition of who is proven to commit drug offenses is if they were convicted through due process?

I mean I know there are a lot of irrational practices in law, but there certainly can't be that many.

Originally Posted by BeHereNow

It seems some of you had problems finding this information:

The drug war has produced profoundly unequal outcomes across racial groups, manifested through racial discrimination by law enforcement and disproportionate drug war misery suffered by communities of color. Although rates of drug use and selling are comparable across racial lines, people of color are far more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug law violations than are whites. Higher arrest and incarceration rates for African Americans and Latinos are not reflective of increased prevalence of drug use or sales in these communities, but rather of a law enforcement focus on urban areas, on lower-income communities and on communities of color as well as inequitable treatment by the criminal justice system.

~ ~ ~
Below is a snip about durg use and arrests iin Seattle, a lot of data.
Here is one summary, about mid way through the report:


In several cases, the Z-scores measuring the discrepancies between the drug-using and arrested populations reveal significant and consistent disparities. In particular, both comparisons suggest that blacks are significantly overrepresented among marijuana, methamphetamine,
and crack arrestees. Latinos are significantly overrepresented among heroin and crack arrestees in both comparisons. By contrast, whites are significantly underrepresented among crack arrestees. Thus, within these drug categories, comparisons of arrest statistics and data regarding the racial and ethnic composition of those who use these illegal drugs suggest statistically
significant disparities. Especially noteworthy are the most robust discrepancies, found between estimates of crack users and crack arrestees, as the majority of possession arrests involve crack (see Figure 1).

In short, although significant racial disparities between the using and arrested populations exist within drug categories, the focus on crack is the primary cause of racial disparity in drug possession arrests. The following section considers a variety of explanations for the focus on crack users.

~ ~ ~

White people currently use illegal drugs at roughly the same rate as black people.

No matter how you slice it, black people are dramatically over-represented — compared to their share of the state and local population — among those going to prison for drug offenses.

~ ~ ~
Although Whites commit more drug offenses, Blacks are arrested and imprisoned on drug charges at much higher rates, the reports found. Atty. Fellner authored the 67-page report titled “Targeting Blacks: Drug Law Enforcement and Race in the United States.” The report presents new evidence of persistent racial disparities among drug offenders sent to prison in 34 states. All of these states send Black drug offenders to prison at much higher rates than Whites.

~ ~ ~ ~

The Rust Belt is no stranger to America’s drug war. Nor is the story of the three decade long mobilization against illegal narcotics a new one. However in her recent book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, former Stanford Law professor, civil rights lawyer, and current Ohio State University faculty member, Michelle Alexander convincingly paints the war on drugs as far more than just a failed multi-decade policy that has resulted in America becoming the prison capital of the world. Instead, she positions the drug war as part of a racial caste system that has imprisoned over a million African American men and disenfranchised even more.

~ ~ ~
To determine whether blacks account for 15 percent of drug users, we first turned to the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, released by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. That study is considered the most reliable in the field, though experts say it probably undercounts harder-core addicts who cannot be reached by survey takers. Among other things, the study quantifies the rates of illicit drug use by different racial and ethnic groups. The drugs studied include marijuana, cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens and inhalants, as well as the nonmedical use of prescription drugs. The numbers do not include tobacco or alcohol.

According to the survey, 9.7 percent of blacks, 8.1 percent of whites and 7.6 percent of Hispanics reported using illicit drugs within the prior month. To convert these figures into something comparable to what Huffington said, we cross-referenced these drug-use rates to the current populations of each ethnic group, according to the Census Bureau. Our calculations showed that 70 percent of drug users are white, 14 percent are black and 13 percent are Hispanic. On this fact, then, Huffington was very, very close.


~ ~ ~
If you need more, let me know.

You are wasting your time in this forum and particularly in this thread, as I did in my thread "Some inconvenient facts about the Land of the Free"

No matter how you slice it, black people are dramatically over-represented — compared to their share of the state and local population — among those going to prison for drug offenses.

the above is one of "some inconvenient facts" that I mentioned in my thread and my conclusion was that the cause was racial discrimination

you just find imbeciles more often than not, of the like of gansao, freedom. and gun crazies such as Doc Jones (more guns = less crime) variety etc

This forum peaked in 2006 and has been going downhill since not only in the number of people posting but in the quality of the posts.

For stupid personal reasons of my own I have persevered for far too long, but, enough is enough.

Originally Posted by Freedom

I'm going to repeat the question, how can any study know who commits drug offenses vs how many are convicted; when the definition of who is proven to commit drug offenses is if they were convicted through due process?

I mean I know there are a lot of irrational practices in law, but there certainly can't be that many.

Let's see if I follow.
It might be that virtually ALL whites are commiting drug offensives, and we couldn't possibly know that.
Am I on the right track here?

And similarly, - youths and smoking tobacco.
We have no idea if any of them are, except the ones arersted for it of course.
Maybe virtually all of them are, maybe virtually none of them are, no way for us to know.
Same with teens and alcohol use - we can only count the ones arrested for it.


The only way statistical evidence can be meaningful, is if it is documented, not by a statistician, but by. . . . .maybe a legal arm of the goverment?

All these years I've been reading statistical evidence, and in most of it, no one was arrested, no one was tagged by some arm of the governement.

Interesting.

Originally Posted by BeHereNow

Let's see if I follow.
It might be that virtually ALL whites are commiting drug offensives, and we couldn't possibly know that.
Am I on the right track here?

And similarly, - youths and smoking tobacco.
We have no idea if any of them are, except the ones arersted for it of course.
Maybe virtually all of them are, maybe virtually none of them are, no way for us to know.
Same with teens and alcohol use - we can only count the ones arrested for it.


The only way statistical evidence can be meaningful, is if it is documented, not by a statistician, but by. . . . .maybe a legal arm of the goverment?

All these years I've been reading statistical evidence, and in most of it, no one was arrested, no one was tagged by some arm of the governement.

Interesting.

....first off this has nothing to do with government official government backing, if you were looking at statistics for home ownership or tree growth it is not hard to imagine the reliable avenues for such research, but when it comes to crime the idea that reliable statistics with any significant divergence from government numbers can be collected seems suspicious.

What are they counting? The number of trials that found someone innocent as criminals who weren't convicted? Going by police records and assuming that everyone is a repeat offender? Or something even more unlikely to work like going door to door or using an online survey?

As for 'tagged by some arm of the government', a jury is an arm of the government now? Then who isn't? Witnesses? People who call the police when they see the law being broken?

I have no doubt there are many drug users who are not in prison, but I was pointing out that it would be very easy for a group of people to produce an analysis which concludes what they want it to by ignoring the possibility of unconvicted black drug users while relying on unconvicted white drug users.

Originally Posted by Freedom

....first off this has nothing to do with government official government backing, if you were looking at statistics for home ownership or tree growth it is not hard to imagine the reliable avenues for such research, but when it comes to crime the idea that reliable statistics with any significant divergence from government numbers can be collected seems suspicious.

What are they counting? The number of trials that found someone innocent as criminals who weren't convicted? Going by police records and assuming that everyone is a repeat offender? Or something even more unlikely to work like going door to door or using an online survey?

As for 'tagged by some arm of the government', a jury is an arm of the government now? Then who isn't? Witnesses? People who call the police when they see the law being broken?

I have no doubt there are many drug users who are not in prison, but I was pointing out that it would be very easy for a group of people to produce an analysis which concludes what they want it to by ignoring the possibility of unconvicted black drug users while relying on unconvicted white drug users.

It seems you have not even looked at my references.
Many sources, many techniques.
This 'group of people' you refer to, is actually several groups of people, working independently.
All arriving at rather consistent conclusions, based on mainstream techniques for gathering such information.


And what do you have to offer?
Let's count the people in prison, look at their skin color, and truth will be revealed.

And who is it that also think this is a reliable means to reach your 'logical' conclusion.
Why it is you, and others on this board, and probably other boards.
What chance do statisticians, scholars, universities, sociologists, have compared to the common Joe?


Why should it be any more difficult than couning the black men in prison, especailly when it gives you the answers you want.

Let me see. Your argument is that when white people are polled, and say they use drugs, they are lying, and the black men who say they are not using drugs, are also lying.
The only ones not lying, are the whites who say they do not use drugs, and the blacks who do use drugs.
And your evidence for this is.....oh, yeah, the black men in prison.
And to you this is all, reasonable, logical.

Originally Posted by BeHereNow

Many sources, many techniques.

Like asking people if they use drugs?

Originally Posted by BeHereNow

This 'group of people' you refer to, is actually several groups of people, working independently.
All arriving at rather consistent conclusions, based on mainstream techniques for gathering such information.

Bias does not require conspiracy. I tried to make this distinction in another thread about zoophilia; no collaboration is required to draw the same incorrect conclusions from data, only to draw the same incorrect data for it is the conclusions not the data that are the subject of bias. For instance I think one of your references refereed to another study in which black and white teens were asked about drug use. In each group (proportioned per race) about the same percentage (not number) responded they did (yet apparently this did not result in arrests?). Taking from that the % drug users was similar for both races they merely multiplied by the overall population to come to the conclusion that more whites take drugs and thus if the system was fair more whites would be in prison.

This is just an example, but it shows the kind of highly questionable reasoning such articles can use. If they choose a school in a drug infested area would be quite possible for the student body to have similar drug habits, it's actually more likely that 8% of teens are bad asses and will say they take drugs when they don't, for if they did and they admitted it they might have just endangered themselves where as if they were just bragging they might get a stern talking to about lying.

Asking people about illegal activity is an inherently inaccurate statistic, and would be shocked if anyone thought otherwise. You may as well be claiming the homosexual population really did increase drastically after the 60's.

Originally Posted by BeHereNow

And what do you have to offer?
Let's count the people in prison, look at their skin color, and truth will be revealed.

I never count people by race, I only deal with the bull that appears when others do.

If people think there is racial bias in the system, go to the source; the law enforcement, the judges, the juries and search for it there because you aren't going to be able to find it in some disparity between the official list of criminals and what you think the list would be.. at least not without having better data on who are criminals than the legal system.

That is what I have to offer, the proposition that almost any source of data would be less reliable than common law practices when it comes to crime.

Originally Posted by BeHereNow

And who is it that also think this is a reliable means to reach your 'logical' conclusion.

The question is never "who" when evaluating an argument or idea.

Originally Posted by BeHereNow

Why it is you, and others on this board, and probably other boards.
What chance do statisticians, scholars, universities, sociologists, have compared to the common Joe?

1. I don't believe in the "common Joe", there are specialist; people who study specific things and have good knowledge on them and that not everyone is a specialist. Anyone can think if they so choose, and no harm will come from it, if they lack the knowledge or data they need for an argument it will show in the argument. Just as I believe that greater knowledge does not grant specialist special authority on the subject, only the natural authority of knowing what they are talking about. Experts don't need to be recognized, if they are truly experts their arguments will trounce the ignorant at every turn. Thus, since this is a debate site I have and will completely ignore all appeals to authority.

2. Disagreements among experts usually follow disagreements among the general population, not on data; on analysis and reliability.

3. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail; experts may have the advantage in their field, but they may also believe their techniques will work when ever they are applied. For instance surveys on criminal activity.

Originally Posted by BeHereNow

Why should it be any more difficult than couning the black men in prison, especailly when it gives you the answers you want.

I don't want any answers, I simply see no way for race to be a greater bias in the legal system than a hundred other factors including wealth, history, attitude, or even the way people dress.

Originally Posted by BeHereNow

Let me see. Your argument is that when white people are polled, and say they use drugs, they are lying, and the black men who say they are not using drugs, are also lying.

My speculation is that when polled on using drugs, anyone who says "yes" is probably lying.

Originally Posted by Winston Smith

You are wasting your time in this forum and particularly in this thread, as I did in my thread "Some inconvenient facts about the Land of the Free"



the above is one of "some inconvenient facts" that I mentioned in my thread and my conclusion was that the cause was racial discrimination

you just find imbeciles more often than not, of the like of gansao, freedom. and gun crazies such as Doc Jones (more guns = less crime) variety etc

This forum peaked in 2006 and has been going downhill since not only in the number of people posting but in the quality of the posts.

For stupid personal reasons of my own I have persevered for far too long, but, enough is enough.

What you have done winston is to post your own brand of left wing yank bashing tripe on this forum and when other laugh at you, you inform us all that you are leaving the forum only to return a few weeks later.
Looks like another hair flick from you
You have had more last performances than Frank Sinatra.

Somebody argued that the solution to leveling the playing field in the racist war on drugs is to imprison whites on equal level as blacks. This means more jails, more cops, more XXXX tests, more attacks on civil liberties.

I have a different solution. First of all, END THE WAR ON DRUGS! Legalize drugs!

Second of all, since the American capitalist system is inherently racist let's just get rid of capitalism! Workers white, black and Latino should unite and throw the capitalist system in the garbage.

After the workers revolution under socialism there will be no more war on drugs. In addition, per-pupil spending will be the same at schools across the nation regardless of race. Hence, all will have an equal chance in life.

Of course, this does not mean that we are all equal. And that's exactly the point! Everyone white, black or Latino should have an equal chance, should go to good quality schools, etc. The net result will be that there will be less stupid rich kids like George Bush getting into higher positions in society. With the improvement and equality of education the smartest and brightest will advance, regardless of race. The George Bushes of the next generations, on the other hand, will do the menial jobs that they are qualified to do.

Correcto, Wolf. The so-called "War against Drugs" is a big GD political scam.

Picking up the sword and extorting people is not the same as throwing off your chains. Russia learned the hard way.

The First (of several) American Anti-Drug Law

The first American anti-drug law was an 1875 San Francisco ordinance which outlawed the smoking of opium in opium dens. It was passed because of the fears that Chinese men were luring white women to their "ruin" in opium dens. Cultural studies of the time showed that opium dens occupied a place in Chinese culture roughly comparable to the position that saloons occupied in white culture. That is, most patrons went to them on the weekends, partook of the intoxicants and went back to their work the following Monday, with no apparent interference in their work. There were opium addicts, of course, but, on balance, the addiction problem didn't seem to be any worse than addiction problems with alcohol. The usage patterns in general seemed to be comparable to the usage patterns of alcohol.

The real source of the prejudice against opium smoking was the racial prejudice against the Chinese. Opium smoking was a peculiarly Chinese custom. White people took their own fair share of opium in concoctions such as laudunum and any number of other over the counter drugs, in liquid, powder, or pill form. It was only the smoking of opium which was outlawed because that was associated with the Chinese. History records that, like most of the drug laws to follow it, the ordinance was massively unsuccessful.

The San Francisco ordinance was followed by Federal legislation in 1888 aimed at keeping the Chinese out of the opium trade and placing certain restrictions on smoking opium. Again, the laws were directed specifically at racial groups and the perceived habits of those racial groups, not the drug itself. Under these laws, there were no restrictions on whites engaged in the opium trade.

Racial prejudice at the time ran to levels which would be difficult to imagine today. One of the newspapers of the time records the story of a group of white men who got drunk and got in an argument over whether Chinese and Indians (Native Americans) were really the same race. To test their theory, they captured a Chinese man and a Native American and took them both to the river and threw them in. The Chinese man drowned, while the Native American swam to shore and escaped. On that basis, they concluded that they were not of the same race. The newspaper did not mention that anyone was punished as a result of the incident.

Racial oppression is American as apple pie, and so is Puritanism. When you mix the two together you get a racist war on drugs.

However, while the war on drugs may result in more incarcerations for blacks accused of the same drug "crimes" as whites, whites are still negatively impacted by the war on drugs.

For example, if your boss doesn't like you because you complained about a lack of safety on the job he can send you to get a "random" urine test. That will give him a good excuse to fire you if you smoked marijuana on your day off a week ago.

Of course, (I'm talking about a certain blue-collar job here), if there's somebody on the same job taking some weird uppers and he's good for production (but not for safety) you can bet he will never be selected for a "random" drug test. Hence, the war on drugs (while worse for blacks) is also bad for whites.

We have the Puritans to thank for Manifest Destiny.
That wonderful Christian Principle that says the slaughter of non-whites is biblically granted to whites, so that they could control this great nation.
The Pequote nation particularly suffered at the hands of the Puritans.

And that was only the beginning.

A bit of trivia, the Puritans made celebration of Christmas illegal in the new land of theirs. Only heathens and pagans celebrated Christmas.

Originally Posted by BeHereNow

We have the Puritans to thank for Manifest Destiny.
That wonderful Christian Principle that says the slaughter of non-whites is biblically granted to whites, so that they could control this great nation.

Where do you get this cr*p, from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright?

Show me the Bible verses you're claiming as the basis of your claim.

Jesus said to love your neighbors and your enemies.