Homicides Over Time, Plus a Question About Drugs
I was looking for information on drug related murders and inadvertently stumbled on this old Bureau of Justice of Statistics report. There’s a lot of interesting information in it. One fascinating table is this:
For context, here is the population breakdown over a period that includes the timespan in the table.
I’m not sure this gives enough information to say what would happen if drugs were legalized, but I am interested in your thoughts.
Mr. Kimel,
You asked readers:
“I’m not sure this gives enough information to say what would happen if drugs were legalized, but I am interested in your thoughts.”
My thoughts:
1. Drug restrictions / laws are not uniformly enforced or applied by income group or by local, state, federal law enforcement or courts..
2. What proportion of illicit drug users become debilitated or addicted over time? Nobody has that information, nor is it estimable..
3 Illicit drug trade and consumption are not part of the “measured economy”, tax revenues or employment rates.
4.” Illicit drugs” have their origins in laws designed to target non-white races (originally blacks and Chinese).. go back to origins of “illegal drug laws” in the US. it’s the moral majority who say the are opposed to drugs but are among the greatest users (source of drug trade profitability).
Longtooth,
First – full disclosure. I do not now nor have I ever had any interest in consuming illicit drugs of any sort.
I appreciate the reasonable response. I agree with the first three points. I would note, however, that to my understanding, pot was illegal going back a long way. And hemp has been used in the US for a long time. I believe ropes on the Mayflower were made from hemp. And any restrictions on pot consumption at that time would most certainly not be targeted at a non-White population.
Mr. Kimel,
You asked readers:
From the Table shown:
Homicide Type by Race
Drug Related Offenders
White: 33.9%, & Blacks 65.0% is the data shown.
But, based on the Average proportion of Race by Population:
Whites 33..9% x ~77.7% of population = ~26% of Drug Offenders Average 1980-2010
Black 65.0%. x ~12.1% of population = – 7.8%% of Drug Offenders Average 1980-2010
White to Black Drug Offenders ratio = 26%/8% = ~3.25x as many Whites as Blacks
The data isn’t clear however.. highly uncertain sources:
:
Is the % of white offenders as percent of the population of whites or as percent of total population?
Does the percentage of offenders reflect law enforcment bias or the offenders by race?
Is “offender” a person in the drug trade or a user?
What about all the users (therefore “offenders” in higher income brackets… mostly white and affluent.
What proportion of those users are listed as “offenders”? Since they weren’t apprehended then they also aren’t part of the crime stats, which doesn’t mean they haven’t committed the same crime as those who are caught.
What proportion of consumption of drugs in $$$ do they account for? Which types of drugs?
Basically the data reflects shit on relation of drugs to crime. Besides that since Pot is federally illegal, but ~50% of the nation uses pot (CA at least.. daily, weekly, monthly or annually), then half the nation are criminal drug offenders .. why aren’t they counted as crimes? Oh, maybe because the U.S. can’t afford to find, prosecute, and incarcerate them all? So are illegal drugs just an excuse to target groups who are being oppressed? And why would that be?
Mr. Kimel,
Pot wasn’t illegal until the administration made it illegal in order to target blacks in the south… part of apartheid and jim crow oppression. This is well and fully documented… the entire campaign to make pot illegal was race based. That’s not my “opinion” .. it’s documented in gov’t propaganda and reasons the then drug Czar gave in public statements and private memos.
You need to read up history in US of drug laws and when and why they become “illegal”. Heroine became illegal to target Chinese immigrants.. another of the terrible race that we used for cheap labor and then they stayed.
Mr. Kimel
I’m sure you noted that the largest proportion of homicides are “sex related”… a euphemism for “prostitution” related homicides .. which is another of the morality play “crimes”,, and thus “homicides” classified as “sex related.”.
67% are White Victims, 31% Black Victims of Sex related homicides. Seems like that should be a bigger problem than drugs doesn’t it? I mean, after all, what proportion of the 67% white victims are females?
Maybe this is just another of our misogynist based laws (including belief that the female spouse in a marriage is a the husband’s property, therefore homicides occur because the female has sex with somebody other than their husband. Who besides religions says that’s “not right”?
It’s a direct outgrowth of wife (or female partner) as a chattel based system of ancient history. More or less to assign economic responsibility to the male who created the pregnancy and child which ensued. Since paternity tests didn’t exist they had to enforce the chattel rule to prevent “unknown” paternity.. Ancient patriarchal societies. What place in modern society does this have and why?
Longtooth,
1. These guys claim marijuana laws were intended to target Mexican immigrants.
2. Whether to target Black people as you note, or Mexican people as the article I linked to claims, stating that drug laws were intended to target one or another minority group makes an implicit assumption that different groups have a different tendency to use different drugs. I was under the impression, from recent comments on the blog, that assuming differences exist is a sign of prejudice and automatically make whatever you are arguing wrong. If I am mistaken about these rules of debate, clarification would be welcome.
3. I am favor of tougher punishment for any homicide which cannot be categorized as self-defense. That includes homicides which are drug related, gang related, sex related, robbery related, or whatever.
4. Many laws do grow out of previously existing mores. That doesn’t make the laws right or wrong. Every law should stand or fall on its own merits, or lack thereof.
Mr. Kimel,
You believe:
“That doesn’t make the laws right or wrong. Every law should stand or fall on its own merits, or lack thereof.”
Define “merits” in objective terms. What you don’t seem to get is that the mores and moray’s from religion and other belief systems define what “merit” means and how it’s measured.
Mr. Kimel, fyi
Harry J. Anslinger, first Commissioner of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics, widely considered the first United States “drug czar”.
“Most marijuana smokers are colored people, jazz musicians, and entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death — the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”
As quoted in Legalizing Marijuana : Drug Policy Reform and Prohibition Politics (2004) by Rudolph Joseph Gerber, p. 9; also in Hawking Hits on the Information Highway : The Challenge of Online Drug Sales for Law Enforcement (2008) by Laura L. Finley , p. 28, and “The Emperor Wears No Clothes: The Authoritative Historical Record of Cannabis and the Conspiracy Against Marijuana” (1994) by Jack Herer, Jeanie Cabarga, and Jeanie Herer, p. 29.
“Traffic in marijuana is increasing to such an extent that it has come to the be cause for the greatest national concern. This drug is as old as civilization itself. Homer wrote about, as a drug that made men forget their homes, and that turned them into swine. In Persia, a thousand years before Christ, there was a religious and military order founded which was called the Assassins and they derived their name from the drug called hashish which is now known in this country as marihuana. They were noted for their acts of cruelty, and the word “assassin” very aptly describes the drug”.
Hearing on H.R. 6385 (April 1937)
“Here we have drug that is not like opium. Opium has all of the good of Dr. Jekyll and all the evil of Mr. Hyde. This drug is entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful effect of which cannot be measured. Some people will fly into a delirious rage, and they are temporarily irresponsible and may commit violent crimes. Other people will laugh uncontrollably. It is impossible to say what the effect will be on any individual. Those research men who have tried it have always been under control. They have always insisted upon that. … It is dangerous to the mind and body, and particularly dangerous to the criminal type, because it releases all of the inhibitions.”
Hearing on H.R. 6385 (April 1937)
“How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured…No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer..” in “Marijuana — Assassin of Youth…”
from The American Magazine, Vol. 24 (July 1937), p. 18
And many more if you had done some simple research. Pot was in wide use among Black in Lousianna and New Orleans, not just the SW border towns and regions. And there was more than ample relationships describing black “bulls” under the influence of Pot raping white women… though that wasn’t gov’t literature or official statements.
You should also read the transcripts of his radio addresses and newspaper interviews. Propaganda of the highest and unabashed order.
Mr. Kimel, fyi
I sent this note to my friends in 2014… I have more research I documented at the time as well.
My note of January 2014:
I thought it would be interesting document the long cycle of cannabis’s unregulated recreational use to it’s becoming an illegal substance with criminal penalties to it’s present status.
In the 1800’s in the U.S. cannabis was widely used as a regulated (in some states) and unregulated (in others) recreational drug.
As early as 1853, recreational cannabis was listed as a “fashionable narcotic”. By the 1880s, oriental-style hashish parlors were flourishing alongside opium dens, to the point that one could be found in every major city on the east coast. It was estimated there were around 500 such establishments in New York City alone. An article in Harper’s Magazine (1883), attributed to Harry Hubbell Kane, describes a hashish-house in New York frequented by a large clientele, including males and females of “the better classes,” and further talks about parlors in Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. Hemp cigarettes were reported to be used by Mexican soldiers early as 1874. Reference
The then regulations were more or less simply to identify certain contents of “medicines”, including opiates, alcohol, and cannabis, or to prohibit sales outside of pharmacies. There were no restrictions on use until the early 1900’s when states began to restrict use and regulated sales of “habit forming drugs”, which included cannabis, without a doctor’s prescription.
In 1935 congress passed the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act, which was shaped and promoted by the chief of Federal Bureau of Narcotics (a prohibitionist Harry J. Anslinger… who retained that position until 1960). Anslinger used propoganda (it causes temporary insanity) to create popular urging for the states to incorporate the act into their state laws. The Anslinger propoganda advertisements featured young people smoking marijuana and then behaving recklessly, committing crimes, killing themselves and others, or dying from marijuana use. Reference Anslinger used racism and racist sentiments to further his propoganda’s affect:
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.” Source: testimony to US Congress supporting Marihuana Tax Act, 1937 (Reference)
“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.” Source: Gore Files (Reference)
“…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.” Source: Gore Files (Reference)
and of course in deference of his friend anti-communist scare propogandist Joseph McCarthy:
“Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing.” Source: Gore Files (Reference)
Not parenthetically, Anslinger, while acting as the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, authorized a druggist near the White House to fill a morphine prescription for an addicted Senator Joseph McCarthy as part of an effort to help the Senator end his heroin addiction. (Source)
“Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy” Source
“Two Negros took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days under the influence of hemp. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis.” (Source)
Most notably there was “No scientific study of any kind was undertaken before the optional marijuana section was proposed. Interestingly, cannabis was a state option on whether to include it as a “narcotic”. and thus subject to the provisions, enforcement, and penalties of the act, but with Anslinger’s propoganda, all states then included cannabis as a “narcotic”. .
Congress then passed laws making cannabis possension and use subject to mandatory sentancing and fines (minumum 2-10 years and $20k) under the 1952 Boggs Act and 1956 Narcotics Control Act… still under the gun and propoganda by Anslinger, still head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics Interestingly though after Anslinger retired in 1962, the mandatory sentancing and fines for cannabis were repealed by Congress in 1970. Hmmm.
But in 1973, under Nixon’s administration, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) wass fomed, and in 1986 under Reagan’s administration, mandatory sentancing and fines were re-introduced with the Anti-Drug Abuse Act… including the death penalty for use against drug “king-pins”
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in California, a legislative commission had been created to study the economic impact the 1976 state legislative law that repealed the prohibistions against cannabis. The law reduced the penalty for personal possession of an ounce or less of marijuana from a felony to a citable misdemeanor with a maximum fine of $100. Possession of more than an ounce was made a misdemeanor, making the maximum fine $500 and/or six months in jail. After the law went into effect, the state’s annual spending towards marijuana laws went down 74%. Prior to the law, the state had been spending from $35 million to $100 million (source)
Since California reduced panalties to a misdimeanor, several more states and localities have followed suit, to the extent that several passed laws allowing medical cannabis use, and most recently Colorado state passed a law legalizing the use of cannabis in Jan 2014 for recreational purposes as a regulated and taxed substance (like tobacco products).
So we’re in the process of coming full circle over the course of years 79 years (1935 to 2014), even though Federal law still restricts cannabis growth, cultivation, transport, sale, and use as a felony and in the same drug class as narcotics…. this is thanks to the conservative moralist Anslinger and his racist and communist scare propaganda.
The Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2013 was introduced into the United States House of Representatives on February 5, 2013 by Rep. Jared Polis (D, CO-2)… and since then it’s been sitting (since February 2013) in various and multiple House committees controlled by the GOP. It shouldn’t come as any surprise though that the House GOP caucus (including the Tea Party) would sit on this bill since it’s been the conservative party that has made cannabis a federal crime with extensive criminal prosecutions, enforcement, and sentancing for possession and use. … made the more-so by the War on Drugs which was the term used to describe Nixon’s press conference on June 18, 1971 in which he declared drug abuse “public enemy number one.”
This was followed by Reagan’s statement in 1981 “We’re taking down the surrender flag that has flown over so many drug efforts; we’re running up a battle flag.” For his first five years in office, Reagan slowly strengthened drug enforcement by creating mandatory minimum sentencing and forfeiture of cash and real estate for drug offenses, policies far more detrimental to poor blacks than any other sector affected by the new laws. (Source) So the conservatives are still practising a racist basis for their position against cannabis… and Anslinger’s racist and anti-commie propaganda of the 1930’s, ’40’s, and ’50’s still resonates beyond his death, carried forward by Nixon and Reagan.
You may wonder about the affect propoganda has on things, but you can’t wonder that it’s used by gov’ts to achieve objectives that have no foundations in fact to support an agenda to do what? Enforce a conservative moral standard?… or whatever authority it uses to supports it’s agenda. One might have thought, rationally that is, that the U.S. experience with prohibition of alcohol would have taught it a lesson about those things that a society will most certainly avail itself of, whether they’re deemed illegal or not. Obviously though it didn’t learn a thing… so much for the so called intelligence of humans, huh? If you don’t think this matters, then you must also not think it matters that the U.S. has by far the highest incarceration rate (per capita) of any large country on the globe, and that this is predominantly due to incarcerations for cannabis sale, distribution, cultivation, transport, and most of all, just use.
Gee, if the conservatives keep having their way, then we can probably look forward sooner or later to a War on Sex by unmarried couples. .. and think about what proportion of the population would be incarcerated then?
Mr. Kimel,
Sorry that that “references” in the former note were not expanded to the links. They’re all documented sources.