law discrepancy

[irishpint]

so i've succumbed to the pressure of my teacher and did the reading for my crime and punishment class. in the reading we learn that the the penalty for 500g of cocaine possession is the SAME as 5g of crack possession (which is 5 years, FYI, longer than the average sentence for kidnapping).

If that isn't blatantly racist I dont know what is. I dont understand how laws like this are able to persist. Now, when I joke around with friends I can be just as racist as anyone (but they're classy jokes, i swear) but this just seems ridiculous.

[peachy]

how is this racists?? its not at all...

its priorities and funding if anything at all

[deadmoney98]

[ QUOTE ]
how is this racists?? its not at all...

its priorities and funding if anything at all

[/ QUOTE ]

Poor minorities use crack, upper class white people use coke. Duh.

[Voltron87]

[ QUOTE ]
so i've succumbed to the pressure of my teacher and did the reading for my crime and punishment class. in the reading we learn that the the penalty for 500g of cocaine possession is the SAME as 5g of crack possession (which is 5 years, FYI, longer than the average sentence for kidnapping).

If that isn't blatantly racist I dont know what is. I dont understand how laws like this are able to persist. Now, when I joke around with friends I can be just as racist as anyone (but they're classy jokes, i swear) but this just seems ridiculous.

[/ QUOTE ]

rocafella drug laws, lol

[irishpint]

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how is this racists?? its not at all...

its priorities and funding if anything at all

[/ QUOTE ]

Poor minorities use crack, upper class white people use coke. Duh.

[/ QUOTE ]

bingo.

[jokerthief]

This pisses me off. Yes this is racist as hell.

[Voltron87]

[ QUOTE ]
how is this racists?? its not at all...

its priorities and funding if anything at all

[/ QUOTE ]

peachy, lol

People seem to confuse "classest" with "racist" quite often around here. It's about money, not colour. Alot of high-income proffessionals who contibute a major portion to the econemy do coke. Imagine if we were to lock them up at the same rate as violent street-corner crack-dealers.

[irishpint]

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rocafella drug laws, lol

[/ QUOTE ]

i dont know what this means. i'm just a kid!

[irishpint]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En respuesta a:</font><hr />
People seem to confuse "classest" with "racist" quite often around here. It's about money, not colour. Alot of high-income proffessionals who contibute a major portion to the econemy do coke. Imagine if we were to lock them up at the same rate as violent street-corner crack-dealers.

[/ QUOTE ]

considering that the MAJORITY of the poor are minorities, and the MAJORITY of the wealthy are not, you could look @ it and say it's a class issue, but it's still clearly a race issue and it's foolish to try and argue otherwise i think.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
People seem to confuse "classest" with "racist" quite often around here. It's about money, not colour. Alot of high-income proffessionals who contibute a major portion to the econemy do coke. Imagine if we were to lock them up at the same rate as violent street-corner crack-dealers.

[/ QUOTE ]

considering that the MAJORITY of the poor are minorities, and the MAJORITY of the wealthy are not, you could look @ it and say it's a class issue, but it's still clearly a race issue and it's foolish to try and argue otherwise i think.

[/ QUOTE ]

the law is not in place simply because they hate black people, which seems to be what you are implying

[Voltron87]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


rocafella drug laws, lol

[/ QUOTE ]

i dont know what this means. i'm just a kid!

[/ QUOTE ]

the rockerfeller drug laws are the laws you are speaking of. they are arcane and unreasonable, and are the legislative reason that so many young black men are in prison for so long. theyre not good.

i called them the "rockafella" laws, a pun on jay z's record label. since jay z sold rocks. thats the street term for crack cocaine. jay z was legendary, not even a bitch could get in his way.

[irishpint]

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People seem to confuse "classest" with "racist" quite often around here. It's about money, not colour. Alot of high-income proffessionals who contibute a major portion to the econemy do coke. Imagine if we were to lock them up at the same rate as violent street-corner crack-dealers.

[/ QUOTE ]

considering that the MAJORITY of the poor are minorities, and the MAJORITY of the wealthy are not, you could look @ it and say it's a class issue, but it's still clearly a race issue and it's foolish to try and argue otherwise i think.

[/ QUOTE ]

the law is not in place simply because they hate black people, which seems to be what you are implying

[/ QUOTE ]

why then is the law in place, because they hate poor people? poor people who are predominately black? is that ok?

[PoBoy321]

I think that, in all honesty, the most likely reason for such stringent penalties for crack is due to the severity of the problem in the mid-80s. The fact that these laws largely affect minorities, I think, is only an unfortunate side effect.

[Voltron87]

[ QUOTE ]
I think that, in all honesty, the most likely reason for such stringent penalties for crack is due to the severity of the problem in the mid-80s. The fact that these laws largely affect minorities, I think, is only an unfortunate side effect.

[/ QUOTE ]

i think youre mostly right, saying that the laws were so stringent because the crack epidemic was so bad. but its an awful way to fight the drug war. and while i dont think the white politicians were thinking "lets lock up black men! now!" i do think they didnt mind police brutality and harsh zero tolerance policies when they were cracking down because the targets were 99% black people in the inner city.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
People seem to confuse "classist" with "racist" quite often around here. It's about money, not colour. Alot of high-income proffessionals who contibute a major portion to the econemy do coke. Imagine if we were to lock them up at the same rate as violent street-corner crack-dealers.

[/ QUOTE ]

considering that the MAJORITY of the poor are minorities, and the MAJORITY of the wealthy are not, you could look @ it and say it's a class issue, but it's still clearly a race issue and it's foolish to try and argue otherwise i think.

[/ QUOTE ]

the law is not in place simply because they hate black people, which seems to be what you are implying

[/ QUOTE ]

why then is the law in place, because they hate poor people? poor people who are predominately black? is that ok?

[/ QUOTE ]

i should not have said "classist". my point is this;

crack destroys MANY more lives than coke

crack-dealers are known to be extremely violent

crack-users are known to take some EXTREMELY desperate measures to get their fix. much more so than your average weekend coke-user

coke is used by just about everyone it would seem nowadays. including MANY hard-working and very wealthy people who contribute a great deal to the economy. painting them with the same brush as a crack-head/dealer is absurd.

bottom line = crack is a far worse drug than cocaine, and should be treated as such

[irishpint]

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including MANY hard-working and very wealthy people who contribute a great deal to the econemy.

[/ QUOTE ]

but because they're wealthy they shouldn't be subject to the same laws as others? this topic was also discussed in the book we had to read. is it not illegal? laws/politics are interesting, albeit very f'ed up.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
including MANY hard-working and very wealthy people who contribute a great deal to the econemy.

[/ QUOTE ]

but because they're wealthy they shouldn't be subject to the same laws as others? this topic was also discussed in the book we had to read. is it not illegal? laws/politics are interesting, albeit very f'ed up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Like I said before, it's all about money. If it's in the economy's best interest to keep certain people out of jail than to uphold some erelevant moral code, then the government will do so.

Another example; If you pay a woman to have sex with you, in most states that would be considered illegal (not to mention disgracefully immoral). However, if you film it, sell it, and give the government a cut, all is well. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[touchfaith]

[ QUOTE ]
so i've succumbed to the pressure of my teacher and did the reading for my crime and punishment class. in the reading we learn that the the penalty for 500g of cocaine possession is the SAME as 5g of crack possession (which is 5 years, FYI, longer than the average sentence for kidnapping).

If that isn't blatantly racist I dont know what is. I dont understand how laws like this are able to persist. Now, when I joke around with friends I can be just as racist as anyone (but they're classy jokes, i swear) but this just seems ridiculous.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you in Law School? If so, how can you be so quick to label something racism without checking the facts? I'm not saying I do know the facts, but there are a few things I damn well better know if I were going to make that statement. Like...

Where these penalties set at the same time? Or, is it simply a by-product of a progression of laws. ie, 'Coke was it' back in the day and someone said "Damn, there otta be a law" and poof there was a penalty set...

Then crack comes along and becomes the drug, but becomes a much larger problem in terms of number of people willing to commit violent crimes to obtain it. Someone says..."DAMN, there otta be a better law..." and poof, there is one, but this time the focus is crack.

It's not that coke was ignored in the penelty stiffing process, they just didn't need to. People aren't running around killing people for coke right now, they are for crack.

Expect the same thing to happen for meth soon hopefully. That [censored]'s bad news.

[Voltron87]

yeah, the laws have worked great. the drug war on crack worked out great for everyone. except... no, there wasnt any particular race or generation that was devastated by it.

[thatpfunk]

There are actually some interesting essays/studies that suggest the history of drug and alcohol prohibition in the US is a racist/prejudiced response to immigration movements.

I don't have too much time but:
Influx of blacks to the North after the civil war. With them came marijuana, a drug common in the south, and the belief that it caused "negroes" to be "lazy." The prohibition of marijuana followed.

The immigration of the Irish and their tradition of drinking in the late 19th and early 20th century lead to the prohibition of alcohol for, fortunately, a short period of time. Remember, the Irish were despised for a period of time in the US.

The Chinese immigration brought over their tradition of opium use. It was a commonly held belief that the users of opium (heroin) were lazy, etc, however many studies now suggest that many opium users were productive members of society. Regardless, the drug was soon made illegal.

I find the whole concept very interesting and not without merit.

[BruinEric]

[ QUOTE ]
so i've succumbed to the pressure of my teacher and did the reading for my crime and punishment class. in the reading we learn that the the penalty for 500g of cocaine possession is the SAME as 5g of crack possession (which is 5 years, FYI, longer than the average sentence for kidnapping).

If that isn't blatantly racist I dont know what is. I dont understand how laws like this are able to persist. Now, when I joke around with friends I can be just as racist as anyone (but they're classy jokes, i swear) but this just seems ridiculous.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can you add some facts to this? Are you discussing State laws, and if so, what State? Or maybe you're talking about Federal Law?

What immediately raised my suspicions about your numbers is that you write: "(which is 5 years, FYI, longer than the average sentence for kidnapping)."

A 10-second Google effort using the term: "average sentence" kidnapping led me to this link: US Sentencing Commission re: average sentence length (http://www.ussc.gov/ANNRPT/2003/table13.pdf)

In that link, it shows that the average sentence length for Kidnapping is over 13 years. The report of which this is an excerpt appears to be a review of Federal Sentencing alone in FY2003. You may have a particular State whose laws and/or sentences for kidnapping are more applicable to your claim.

[PoBoy321]

I've read similar theories about the origins of drug and alcohol prohibitions, and it's interesting because many of these movements started in areas where those groups were most highly concentrated. Mexicans and marijuana in the southwest, blacks and cocaine in the southeast, opium and the chinese on the west coast and the Irish and alcohol on the East coast.

[MrMon]

[ QUOTE ]
bottom line = crack is a far worse drug than cocaine, and should be treated as such

[/ QUOTE ]

From the Drug Policy Alliance website:

Many myths surround crack use. Despite media reports claiming crack to be addictive with a single use, the best data, from government-sponsored surveys, have consistently shown that less than one out of four people who ever tried the drug used it more than once.

Media stories of a "crack baby" epidemic, which began to appear in the late 1980s, are now considered greatly exaggerated. Research now indicates that other factors, such as poverty, are responsible for many of the ills previously thought to be associated with crack use. Criminal penalties for possession and sale of powder cocaine are severe. Much higher penalties exist for possession and sale of crack, despite the fact that, pharmacologically, they are the same drug. Simple possession of five grams of crack cocaine yields a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for a first offense; it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to prompt the same sentence.

Draw your own conclusions about why the disparity. Personally, I don't buy the racism angle. I think it was more a media hype and panic situation. Yet no one will ever admit it was a mistake, either in the press or in the government.

[deadmoney98]

The law is racist because of its outcome. That does not mean that the people who created the law had to have racist intentions, but the effect of the law is de facto racism.

Similarly, there are historians who would argue that the origins of slavery had little to do with racism, but clearly the outcome was racist.

[PoBoy321]

[ QUOTE ]
The law is racist because of its outcome. That does not mean that the people who created the law had to have racist intentions, but the effect of the law is de facto racism.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is ridiculous, simply because it is a complete misuse of the word "racist."

[tonypaladino]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


rocafella drug laws, lol

[/ QUOTE ]

i dont know what this means. i'm just a kid!

[/ QUOTE ]

the rockerfeller drug laws are the laws you are speaking of. they are arcane and unreasonable, and are the legislative reason that so many young black men are in prison for so long. theyre not good.

i called them the "rockafella" laws, a pun on jay z's record label. since jay z sold rocks. thats the street term for crack cocaine. jay z was legendary, not even a bitch could get in his way.

[/ QUOTE ]

Rockafeller Laws are the New York State laws.

[tonypaladino]

[ QUOTE ]
The law is racist because of its outcome.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is such bullsh*t.

A few years ago the law was changed in New Jersey to allow police to pull over a car for a seatbelt violation. Previosly, a seatbelt violation could only be issued if the car was pulled over for some other reason. Some NY/NJ area black leaders argued that the law is racist because black people are less likely to wear seatbelts than black people. they were prompltly ignored, and the issue faded.

Could anyone justify this law as racist? Assume black people actually do wear seatbelts less often than white people, it will result in more blacks being pulled over. does the outcome make it racist?

As a hypothetical, there is a town that is 50% white and 50% black. 50% of cigarette smokers are white, and 50% are black. Smoking is then made illegal in this town. Overall smoking decreases, but the ration remians 50/50 black and white smokers. Over the course of two or three generations, by chance, the ratio of smokers is now 80% black, 20% white. This will result in 80% of the people arrested for smoking to be black. Is this a racist law?

[tonypaladino]

[ QUOTE ]
Influx of blacks to the North after the civil war. With them came marijuana, a drug common in the south, and the belief that it caused "negroes" to be "lazy." The prohibition of marijuana followed.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure how accurate this can be, because marijuana was not banned until the 1930's. From what I have read, paper at this time was made primarily of cotton, and a process was invented to make hemp paper, which would be considerably cheaper than cotton paper. Hearst had investments in cotton interests, as well as control of the country's print media, and swayed public opinion towards prohibition of marijuana.

[ QUOTE ]

The immigration of the Irish and their tradition of drinking in the late 19th and early 20th century lead to the prohibition of alcohol for, fortunately, a short period of time. Remember, the Irish were despised for a period of time in the US.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes the Irish (and other immigrants) were despised, and this was no doubt a factor in prohibition, but a primary reason is also that American culture and has been ingrained with prodistant christian morality from the start.
[ QUOTE ]

The Chinese immigration brought over their tradition of opium use. It was a commonly held belief that the users of opium (heroin) were lazy, etc, however many studies now suggest that many opium users were productive members of society. Regardless, the drug was soon made illegal.


[/ QUOTE ]

I dont' know anything about this, but on a lighter note, it's been my lifelong dream to one day operate an opium den. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

TONY

[thatpfunk]

as, of this moment, i am playing what we don't speak about in oot, i can't explain much. i am sure a google search can provide some articles which extrapolate on the topic much more thoroughly than I.

[irishpint]

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</font><blockquote><font class="small">En respuesta a:</font><hr />
so i've succumbed to the pressure of my teacher and did the reading for my crime and punishment class. in the reading we learn that the the penalty for 500g of cocaine possession is the SAME as 5g of crack possession (which is 5 years, FYI, longer than the average sentence for kidnapping).

If that isn't blatantly racist I dont know what is. I dont understand how laws like this are able to persist. Now, when I joke around with friends I can be just as racist as anyone (but they're classy jokes, i swear) but this just seems ridiculous.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you in Law School?

[/ QUOTE ]

nope, i'm going to dental school, but one of my pre-reqs is some crime and punishment liberal arts bull, and we had to read some stuff about this tonight. sorry dude, try and bring someone else down.

[SammyKid11]

Is it a wonder to anyone that our society tries to get away from blacks and other minority groups that are considered "uncivilized and unsafe" by white people (including hispanics and native Americans)?

Only 60 years ago we had massive segregation in huge parts of the country...this included schools, restaurants, neighborhoods, churches, water fountains, and a ton of other avenues. There has been a Great White Flight going on in America for decades, where white people move away from minorities...and then when the neighborhood becomes more affordable and more minorities move in, the white people move further outside the city. We put Native Americans on reservations, and then everytime a "white" settlement popped up, we forced them to move. Immigration politics in this country is basically a "who can convince white voters they are actually against letting Mexicans in while not alienating the Hispanic community?" White people with enough means send their kids to boarding schools, universities, into fraternities and sororities, etc. -- where their children can deal almost exclusively with other white people. Suburban churches and country clubs are still the whitest places in the country, save for the people who serve food and clean bathrooms in said places. We move the homeless (a large majority of which are black and hispanic) all around our metro areas to keep them from "dirtying" up the look of a city, as Houston did when they were hosting the Super Bowl (cause you can't have poor black people ruining the look of a city that's going to be visited by rich, white, drunken football fans).

Anyway...there are lots more examples I could give...but given these things, is it really any wonder that THIS society of ours might have a drug policy, the purpose of which is to keep young black men behind bars and AWAY from us white people? We've been doing it with every race we've found distasteful for as long as we've been a country. With today's civil rights protections, keeping minorities and other "undesirables" away from whitebread culture is a trickier thing and requires a more sophisticated effort. Politicians get elected on these mandatory minimums, because the vast majority of congressional districts are vastly white...and the voters overwhelmingly make decisions like the dicktard who suggested that because rich, white people did cocaine and they contributed "more" to our society, their punishment SHOULD be less strict. What a crock, but it's how our country's being run.

Yes, the laws are racist, whether the original authors intended them to be or not. They are yet another Jim Crow Law for minorities to overcome, and they should be immediately struck down (but they won't with two BushJustices on the court, which is beginning to look more and more like a Mississippi Southern Baptist Church Board of Deacons every day).

I've always thought the rise of homicidal behavior among blacks when crack was introduced into society led to this law discrepency.

From the dept. of Justice:
http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/4646/hom8op7iw.gif (http://imageshack.us)

[thatpfunk]

Please find the graph comparing the murder number of poor blacks and poor whites and get back to me.

Actually, just get back to the board since you're now ignored.

O noes a total stranger on teh internets is ignoring me!

[SammyKid11]

[ QUOTE ]
I've always thought the rise of homicidal behavior among blacks when crack was introduced into society led to this law discrepency.

[/ QUOTE ]

You thought wrong. If we wanted to control homicide, we would pour more money into police departments, DA's offices, counseling and treatment for violent criminals who have yet to "graduate" to murder, etc. And if we wanted to further punish and thereby disincentivize homicide, then we can always raise the mandatory minimums on, gasp, homicide. However, when we make the penalties for an overwhelmingly black drug 10x higher than the penalties for an overwhelmingly white form of the very same drug, we're simply being racists.

It'd help things alot if you were able to simply admit that, but judging by your immature and very impugning response to the last poster (wherein you seem to be faking your best "slave" accent), I'd say that's probably unlikely.

[Transference]

[ QUOTE ]
i should not have said "classist". my point is this;

crack destroys MANY more lives than coke

crack-dealers are known to be extremely violent

crack-users are known to take some EXTREMELY desperate measures to get their fix. much more so than your average weekend coke-user

coke is used by just about everyone it would seem nowadays. including MANY hard-working and very wealthy people who contribute a great deal to the economy. painting them with the same brush as a crack-head/dealer is absurd.

bottom line = crack is a far worse drug than cocaine, and should be treated as such

[/ QUOTE ]

So, um other than a bunch of "facts" you just made up do you have anything to add?

[lucas9000]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


rocafella drug laws, lol

[/ QUOTE ]

i dont know what this means. i'm just a kid!

[/ QUOTE ]

keep reading.

[lucas9000]

[ QUOTE ]
so i've succumbed to the pressure of my teacher and did the reading for my crime and punishment class. in the reading we learn that the the penalty for 500g of cocaine possession is the SAME as 5g of crack possession (which is 5 years, FYI, longer than the average sentence for kidnapping).

If that isn't blatantly racist I dont know what is. I dont understand how laws like this are able to persist. Now, when I joke around with friends I can be just as racist as anyone (but they're classy jokes, i swear) but this just seems ridiculous.

[/ QUOTE ]

this is not a race thing, this is a stupid drug laws thing. think about the laws governing lsd. that's a white person's drug if ever there was one, but the lsd laws are possibly the most insane of any of the drug laws.

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
this is not a race thing, this is a stupid drug laws thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a very good answer.

[jokerthief]

[ QUOTE ]


this is not a race thing, this is a stupid drug laws thing. think about the laws governing lsd. that's a white person's drug if ever there was one, but the lsd laws are possibly the most insane of any of the drug laws.

[/ QUOTE ]

What are the laws for LSD like?

[lucas9000]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


this is not a race thing, this is a stupid drug laws thing. think about the laws governing lsd. that's a white person's drug if ever there was one, but the lsd laws are possibly the most insane of any of the drug laws.

[/ QUOTE ]

What are the laws for LSD like?

[/ QUOTE ]

for starters, they use the weight of the medium to determine the penalty. so, even though a sugar cube might contain only one "hit" of lsd, it weighs substantially more, so the penalty becomes outrageous. that, combined with the whole mandatory minimum sentencing thing. do a google search, i'm sure there are tons of web sites about the lsd laws and mandatory minimums. there are a lot of hippies doing long stretches because of those laws /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[touchfaith]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
so i've succumbed to the pressure of my teacher and did the reading for my crime and punishment class. in the reading we learn that the the penalty for 500g of cocaine possession is the SAME as 5g of crack possession (which is 5 years, FYI, longer than the average sentence for kidnapping).

If that isn't blatantly racist I dont know what is. I dont understand how laws like this are able to persist. Now, when I joke around with friends I can be just as racist as anyone (but they're classy jokes, i swear) but this just seems ridiculous.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you in Law School?

[/ QUOTE ]

nope, i'm going to dental school, but one of my pre-reqs is some crime and punishment liberal arts bull, and we had to read some stuff about this tonight. sorry dude, try and bring someone else down.

[/ QUOTE ]

lol, if I wanted to bring you down...you'd know

If you are too embarressed by your racist views to answer a question, you may have issues.