8 ms·

> Likewise, whites are more likely to use low-penalty drugs like hallucinogens, and blacks are more likely to use high-penalty drugs like crack cocaine. Why is

by pflats 11y ago

> Likewise, whites are more likely to use low-penalty drugs like hallucinogens, and blacks are more likely to use high-penalty drugs like crack cocaine. Why is it, then, that crack cocaine is a high-penalty drug, and hallucinogens are low-penalty drugs? (I leave this as an exercise to the reader.)

ikeboy 11y ago
He mentions this in the summary. Note that this still doesn't support kennywinker's claim that "profiling and racist policing directly leads to economic exclusion". If anything, higher usage, combined with several other factors, possibly including racist laws (but not racist enforcement of those laws), led to this.
gluelogic 11y ago
Crack is highly physically addictive. People aren't out robbing houses to get their next acid fix.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > Crack is highly physically addictive. People aren't out robbing houses to get their next acid fix. Powder cocaine is literally the same drug as crack cocaine, yet the sentencing disparities since the 1980s have been completely out of sync. They've slightly converged in the last ~5 years (crack cocaine sentences have been reduced), but let's not pretend that the sentencing laws[0] have not been radically influenced by perceptions of associations of drugs with race. > People aren't out robbing houses to get their next _____ fix LSD is not physically addictive, but in general, I'll encourage you to question this line of thinking. Looking at whether people are "out robbing houses" glosses over the question of why people would commit robbery in order to purchase drugs, and the racial and socioeconomic issues that are inextricably linked to that. Put another way: who's not committing robbery in order to purchase the drugs that they use, and why aren't they? Is it because their drug (e.g. powdered cocaine) is fundamentally less addictive? Or is it because they are already in a position in society that allows them other opportunities to finance their drug use? Is it a statement about the drug itself, or simply a statement about the social structures that already exist? [0] If you want a really wonderful example of this, look at the reason that possession of <27g of marijuana was the only drug that was exempted from the Rockefeller drug laws' mandatory minimum sentencing. It was, quite literally, that kids in predominantly white and wealthy suburbs were being sentenced to prison time, and the parents wanted the judges to have discretionary power when sentencing them.
  - powertower 11y ago
    > Powder cocaine is literally the same drug as crack cocaine Highly incorrect. Smoking an equivalent amount of cocaine-base (crack) vs snorting cocaine-HCL (powder) is a completely different experience due to purity, ROA, and absorption (surface area of lungs vs nasal passage is 50x), etc. Not to mention that is not an ionic bond, it is covalent. Different molecule.
    - chimeracoder 11y ago
      > Smoking an equivalent amount of cocaine-base (crack) vs snorting cocaine-HCL (powder) is a completely different experience This boils down to "the means of ingestion of a drug has a significant effect on the effects of the drug". Anybody who has ever both smoked a joint and consumed THC edibles knows firsthand that this is the case. Insufflation and ingestion are different from inhalation, so yes, the experience, onset, reinforcement mechanisms would be different. That does not change the fact that they are fundamentally the same drug. > Not to mention that is not an ionic bond, it is covalent. Different molecule. It's not the form it's transported in that's relevant; it's the form that reaches the CNS that matters[0]. In this case, the pharmacokinetics of the two drugs are the same once they hit the bloodstream. If that doesn't convince you, the consider that the effects of injecting crack cocaine[1] and powder cocaine are literally chemically identical. [0] Actually, it's the pharmacokinetic process of the drug that's relevant, since two different molecules can be metabolized identically. (And not all drugs affect the CNS, but that's a side point). [1] Less common, because smoking is logistically easier, and also results in a sharper onset since it saves half the round trip to the lungs. But it does happen.
      - powertower 11y ago
        > In this case, the pharmacokinetics of the two drugs are the same once they hit the bloodstream. Highly incorrect. The amount of the drug and concentration of the drug and the salt or ester of the drug can impact the pharmacokinetics of the drug. It was used to be thought that morphine and heroin was the same exact thing because the H was converted to morphine quickly. Except H ends up having different metabolites and ratios - not the mention the effects are not the same / even when accounted for the dose and ROA. Also, to the main point, if one produces 10x the effect of the other, the point is the same... Crack is severely more punished over cocaine because it severely impacts user behavior - much more so than cocaine. The campaign to punish crack possession was also largely due to blacks demanding it to be made as so.
pakled_engineer 11y ago
Because of the damage addiction does to communities. When these laws were passed it was people in those affected communities demanding them. People forget there were huge community marches in the 80s/90s crack epidemics with locals demanding police rid their towns of crack dealers.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > People forget there were huge community marches in the 80s/90s crack epidemics with locals demanding police rid their towns of crack dealers. People also forget why those dealers were in the business in the first place. (Hint: the US government played a large role in explicitly financing the drug trade that resulted in a stead inflow of crack, predominantly to black communities[0]. Crack cocaine would not have been anywhere nearly as lucrative a business otherwise[1].) [0] https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ [1] Which isn't to say that it's particularly lucrative either way, as has been demonstrated numerous times by economists - it just happens to be one of the few options available for many people who are trying to scrape together a living under those circumstances.
  - pakled_engineer 11y ago
    A steady influx of cocaine, which became too expensive when said shady agencies stopped what they were doing and local dealers decided to boil the expensive coke into crack so it became more affordable to addicts. Now there was a $5 per point addictive drug flooding poor areas with zero law enforcement to control it. I remember big protests with black community leaders accusing the police of racism for not arresting crack dealers as their neighborhoods had become so dangerous police totally avoided them. They demanded new laws. Their newly elected reps ran on a platform of new tougher laws. The heavy hand of government then solved this by creating mandatory minimum sentencing and other laws that were blanket applied regardless of individual situation and created mass incarceration.
    - chimeracoder 11y ago
      Yes. Now, let's think why white neighborhoods were not struggling with the same problems of violent crime due to the drug trade. We know that the answer is not (a) white people weren't doing drugs (b) white people were doing drugs that were less addictive because in reality, white people had (and still have) roughly the same total rates of drug use as everyone else. And in this case, white people were largely using the same drug (cocaine, in powered form) as black people (cocaine, in freebase form). I'm not saying that black people at the time weren't concerned with violent crime and calling for solutions to it. In fact, I'm usually the person who points this out whenever discussions about 80s and 90s drug law sentencing come up on HN. What I am saying instead is that it's silly to ignore the reason that black communities were concerned with problems that white communities never had to face in the first place.
zeveb 11y ago
> Why is it, then, that crack cocaine is a high-penalty drug, and hallucinogens are low-penalty drugs? Because black communities in the 1980s pushed for a crackdown (pun intended) on the crack industry, while no-one really cares all that much about the hallucinogen industries.
powertower 11y ago
> Why is it, then, that crack cocaine is a high-penalty drug, and hallucinogens are low-penalty drugs? Because people are much more likely to kill, rob, rape, and do other heinous crimes from crack use than occasional LSD use. When crack-cocaine hit the black communities, it absolutely destroyed them far much more than any previous drugs did.

by pflats 11y ago

ikeboy 11y ago

He mentions this in the summary. Note that this still doesn't support kennywinker's claim that "profiling and racist policing directly leads to economic exclusion". If anything, higher usage, combined with several other factors, possibly including racist laws (but not racist enforcement of those laws), led to this.

gluelogic 11y ago

Crack is highly physically addictive. People aren't out robbing houses to get their next acid fix.

chimeracoder 11y ago
> Crack is highly physically addictive. People aren't out robbing houses to get their next acid fix. Powder cocaine is literally the same drug as crack cocaine, yet the sentencing disparities since the 1980s have been completely out of sync. They've slightly converged in the last ~5 years (crack cocaine sentences have been reduced), but let's not pretend that the sentencing laws[0] have not been radically influenced by perceptions of associations of drugs with race. > People aren't out robbing houses to get their next _____ fix LSD is not physically addictive, but in general, I'll encourage you to question this line of thinking. Looking at whether people are "out robbing houses" glosses over the question of why people would commit robbery in order to purchase drugs, and the racial and socioeconomic issues that are inextricably linked to that. Put another way: who's not committing robbery in order to purchase the drugs that they use, and why aren't they? Is it because their drug (e.g. powdered cocaine) is fundamentally less addictive? Or is it because they are already in a position in society that allows them other opportunities to finance their drug use? Is it a statement about the drug itself, or simply a statement about the social structures that already exist? [0] If you want a really wonderful example of this, look at the reason that possession of <27g of marijuana was the only drug that was exempted from the Rockefeller drug laws' mandatory minimum sentencing. It was, quite literally, that kids in predominantly white and wealthy suburbs were being sentenced to prison time, and the parents wanted the judges to have discretionary power when sentencing them.
- powertower 11y ago
  > Powder cocaine is literally the same drug as crack cocaine Highly incorrect. Smoking an equivalent amount of cocaine-base (crack) vs snorting cocaine-HCL (powder) is a completely different experience due to purity, ROA, and absorption (surface area of lungs vs nasal passage is 50x), etc. Not to mention that is not an ionic bond, it is covalent. Different molecule.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > Smoking an equivalent amount of cocaine-base (crack) vs snorting cocaine-HCL (powder) is a completely different experience This boils down to "the means of ingestion of a drug has a significant effect on the effects of the drug". Anybody who has ever both smoked a joint and consumed THC edibles knows firsthand that this is the case. Insufflation and ingestion are different from inhalation, so yes, the experience, onset, reinforcement mechanisms would be different. That does not change the fact that they are fundamentally the same drug. > Not to mention that is not an ionic bond, it is covalent. Different molecule. It's not the form it's transported in that's relevant; it's the form that reaches the CNS that matters[0]. In this case, the pharmacokinetics of the two drugs are the same once they hit the bloodstream. If that doesn't convince you, the consider that the effects of injecting crack cocaine[1] and powder cocaine are literally chemically identical. [0] Actually, it's the pharmacokinetic process of the drug that's relevant, since two different molecules can be metabolized identically. (And not all drugs affect the CNS, but that's a side point). [1] Less common, because smoking is logistically easier, and also results in a sharper onset since it saves half the round trip to the lungs. But it does happen.
    - powertower 11y ago
      > In this case, the pharmacokinetics of the two drugs are the same once they hit the bloodstream. Highly incorrect. The amount of the drug and concentration of the drug and the salt or ester of the drug can impact the pharmacokinetics of the drug. It was used to be thought that morphine and heroin was the same exact thing because the H was converted to morphine quickly. Except H ends up having different metabolites and ratios - not the mention the effects are not the same / even when accounted for the dose and ROA. Also, to the main point, if one produces 10x the effect of the other, the point is the same... Crack is severely more punished over cocaine because it severely impacts user behavior - much more so than cocaine. The campaign to punish crack possession was also largely due to blacks demanding it to be made as so.

pakled_engineer 11y ago

Because of the damage addiction does to communities. When these laws were passed it was people in those affected communities demanding them. People forget there were huge community marches in the 80s/90s crack epidemics with locals demanding police rid their towns of crack dealers.

chimeracoder 11y ago
> People forget there were huge community marches in the 80s/90s crack epidemics with locals demanding police rid their towns of crack dealers. People also forget why those dealers were in the business in the first place. (Hint: the US government played a large role in explicitly financing the drug trade that resulted in a stead inflow of crack, predominantly to black communities[0]. Crack cocaine would not have been anywhere nearly as lucrative a business otherwise[1].) [0] https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ [1] Which isn't to say that it's particularly lucrative either way, as has been demonstrated numerous times by economists - it just happens to be one of the few options available for many people who are trying to scrape together a living under those circumstances.
- pakled_engineer 11y ago
  A steady influx of cocaine, which became too expensive when said shady agencies stopped what they were doing and local dealers decided to boil the expensive coke into crack so it became more affordable to addicts. Now there was a $5 per point addictive drug flooding poor areas with zero law enforcement to control it. I remember big protests with black community leaders accusing the police of racism for not arresting crack dealers as their neighborhoods had become so dangerous police totally avoided them. They demanded new laws. Their newly elected reps ran on a platform of new tougher laws. The heavy hand of government then solved this by creating mandatory minimum sentencing and other laws that were blanket applied regardless of individual situation and created mass incarceration.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    Yes. Now, let's think why white neighborhoods were not struggling with the same problems of violent crime due to the drug trade. We know that the answer is not (a) white people weren't doing drugs (b) white people were doing drugs that were less addictive because in reality, white people had (and still have) roughly the same total rates of drug use as everyone else. And in this case, white people were largely using the same drug (cocaine, in powered form) as black people (cocaine, in freebase form). I'm not saying that black people at the time weren't concerned with violent crime and calling for solutions to it. In fact, I'm usually the person who points this out whenever discussions about 80s and 90s drug law sentencing come up on HN. What I am saying instead is that it's silly to ignore the reason that black communities were concerned with problems that white communities never had to face in the first place.

zeveb 11y ago

> Why is it, then, that crack cocaine is a high-penalty drug, and hallucinogens are low-penalty drugs? Because black communities in the 1980s pushed for a crackdown (pun intended) on the crack industry, while no-one really cares all that much about the hallucinogen industries.

powertower 11y ago

> Why is it, then, that crack cocaine is a high-penalty drug, and hallucinogens are low-penalty drugs? Because people are much more likely to kill, rob, rape, and do other heinous crimes from crack use than occasional LSD use. When crack-cocaine hit the black communities, it absolutely destroyed them far much more than any previous drugs did.