4 ms·

This. Time and time again, drugs and their legal status have far more to do with their most common users.

• filoeleven 9y ago
  ...except that white people use drugs at roughly the same levels as everyone else, and are the largest proportion of “the most common users”. This is not to invalidate the original post—just be aware of how the perception of drug use has been shaped towards racist ends vs what the data shows. You have to look at usage studies, not arrest reports.
  • code_duck 9y ago
    The target for Nixon was hippies and the left in general.
  • adjkant 9y ago
    The fact that usage is the same and arrests are different is the whole point - make the drug illegal, arrest only those you want to discriminate. The history and timing of the criminalization of weed, opioids, crack cocaine sentencing, etc all line up with what my post said. What's the importance of the distinction?