Premium
White House: Time to equalize cocaine‐crack sentencing
Author(s) -
Knopf Alison
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
alcoholism and drug abuse weekly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1556-7591
pISSN - 1042-1394
DOI - 10.1002/adaw.33112
Subject(s) - prison , blame , crack cocaine , white (mutation) , possession (linguistics) , criminology , psychology , cocaine use , racism , law , political science , psychiatry , biochemistry , chemistry , linguistics , philosophy , gene
Back in 2006, a study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy found that most whites who support prison for cocaine possession blame the person who uses drugs, think that Blacks are more likely than whites to use cocaine and deny that racism is a problem or that it even exists (see “Study examines attitudes toward prison for first‐time cocaine offenders,” ADAW , June 12, 2006). At this time, sentencing disparities for crack cocaine and cocaine powder had been going on since the 1980s. The study, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, could have been written today, but if President Joe Biden and his Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) have anything to say about it, that sentencing disparity is going to end.