At the risk of dating myself, in 1972 I was a student at Columbia University in New York City earning a masters degree in Mass Communications. During one of my classes a professor invited a former drug addict from Harlem to address the students. During his presentation, the former addict said, “You can never stop people from using drugs, so you might as well go ahead and legalize.”

When I first heard that statement, I thought it was both ridiculous and dangerous. However, every year since 1972, I found myself watching the horrible results and collateral damage caused by the so-called war on drugs until in the late 1980s I reached the conclusion that as it is prosecuted in America, the war on illegal drugs is racist and is causing just as much harm in the Black community as the drugs themselves.

As NAACP Chairman Julian Bond pointed out this week the chances of a Black person going to prison in this country are 447 percent higher than that for a white person. A major contributing factor is the war on drugs. As the Justice Department reported last month, an astonishing 11 percent of all Black males between 25 and 34 are in prison. A major contributing factor is the war on drugs. And local, state and federal officials have done such a good job putting Black men in prison that the fastest growing segment of the prison population is now Black females. The major contributing factor is the war on drugs.

Entire families and communities are being devastated by an almost sinister combination of illegal drugs and the war on drugs which has as its primary focus arresting and jailing people not curing them of their addictions. This is because you cannot wage a war against a plant or inanimate object. When you wage war, you are waging war against someone. And the “someone” in America was the members of various minority groups, especially Blacks and even more especially young, Black males.

Further, the “war on drugs’ has not reduced the availability of illegal drugs; it has simply put untold thousands of mostly poor, inner city Blacks and Hispanics in jail. And that was the purpose of this fear-based war. Those prosecuting this war felt that if they put enough people in jail and gave them long enough sentences, the remaining drug-using population would become so frightened of imprisonment that they would simply quit using.

It has not worked because it cannot work. Further, all one need do is read the history of America’s anti drug wars from the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 to today to discover that the targets have always been members of minority groups, especially Blacks, not because they love us but because they fear us.

The use, possession and addiction to harmful illegal drugs must be treated primarily as a medical problem not a criminal one. Less harmful drugs such as marijuana should be de-criminalized and those convicted of using the more harmful ones should be sentenced to six months in a drug rehabilitation center not to 5, 10 or 20 years in prison.

The current war does not eliminate drug use, it simply jails people and that is wrecking untold havoc on the Black community. As Democratic president candidate and former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel said at the recent Democratic presidential forum at Howard University, the war on drugs is “The scourge of our society, particularly in the African American community.”

[Robert N. Taylor is editor of the National Black News Journal - http://www.freewebs.com/blacknewsjournal/ or email responses to roberttaylor@blacknewsjournal.net ]