Sarah Touhey

Criminology
Professor Durso
April 9, 2015
Reformation of Drug Laws
The film The House I Live In discussed a largely overlooked issue in America; the
inequality that is present in drug-related laws. It unveiled how many social factors, such as race,
social class, are being used as targets for drug-related offenses. For example, the drugs
associated with young black malesespecially crack-cocainehave harsher penalties than those
associated with white people living in suburbspowdered cocaine. Drug laws have become a
way to ostracize groups of people who have a lower status in society. But is there a way to
reform these laws, and if there is, what challenges do we as a society need to overcome to
accomplish this reform?
There are a few difficult issues that need to be resolved before equality in drug-related
arrests become a reality. One major step in the right direction is creating a more positive view of
the people associated with using drugs. This includes racial minorities and the poor. Although it
is widely believed that overtly racist motives are being used by police officers when it comes to
drug-related arrests, their implicit, or unconscious, beliefs may be the cause of such inequality.
Due to social forces, people start to unconsciously associate certain groups of people as drug
users. If we can create ways to prevent these implicit beliefs from forming, we may be able to
separate the association between certain groups of people and drug use. However, changing an
entire cultures unconscious beliefs is going to take a lot of time and effort. There needs to be
certain people that will take a stand and make a change.

One way that people can make a change is getting rid of the disparity in sentencing for
drug crimes. As I pointed out previously, crack-cocaine, which is associated with black
populations, and cocaine, which is associated with white population, are sentenced
disproportionally. In fact, as pointed out by The House I Live In, they were being sentenced 100
to 1. This means that for every five grams of crack-cocaine that is in your possession, you will
be charged with the same amount of prison time as someone charged with one hundred grams of
powder cocaine. This large difference in sentencing gives people a misleading view that crack is
more dangerous than cocaine. If we were able to eliminate the gap in sentencing, we may be
able to change peoples views on the danger of these drugs, and those individuals that are
associated with them.
Unfortunately, results for these reforms will not come easily. Changing peoples
unconscious attitudes will take years. In order to speed up that process, we need to show the
people to treat all drug-related arrests equally by changing those laws. This will be the hardest to
change. Politicians and other law makers pride themselves on being tough on crime. If they
reduce the drug-sentencing laws, their re-election campaigns may suffer. Also, corporations such
as phone, security, and television companies, are now dependent on the drug war and
incarceration rates for their businesses to continue successfully. Reformation of drug laws could
be seen as more costly than the harm they are currently causing. But we must recognize that the
crime does not fit the time in the way that it should. Society must change. In order to ensure this
change, we must prove to the law makers that these disparities are unacceptable and they need
transformed.