The main reason I wanted to study drugs was because I thought drugs were destroying the black community. As I studied longer, I realized it was not the drugs that were destroying the community; it was the fact that we have bad policies. These drug policies lead to the arrest of a large number of black men. That was doing more harm to the community than the actual drugs. Particularly when you look at the fact that drugs are used primarily and most often by white people. However, I don’t hear people saying drugs are destroying their community.
How did the war on drugs become a war on poor minorities?
When we think of drugs like crack cocaine, black people use crack about the same pace as white people. Now, when you think about the fact that the federal laws that are regulating cocaine, 85 percent of the people prosecuted are black. We place our law enforcement resources in black communities and we go after black people. We target black people. The laws are not racist; it is our applications of the laws. It is our law enforcement. That is what is racist.
During your studies, what was the most interesting thing you discovered about drugs and addiction?
One of the things that we have been finding that’s interesting with most people is that the majority of people who use drugs are not addicted. We’re talking about 80 or 90 percent of these people who are not addicted. They are more like President Obama, who used drugs when he was a young man; President George W. Bush who also used drugs when he was a young man; and President Bill Clinton who also used drugs when he was a young man. The public’s perception is not those guys when we think of drug users. If you start to shift your view of what drug users look like, maybe you’ll have a more realistic view, and then maybe your policies will reflect it. We did a study in which we provided alternatives like money to drug users. When given the choice of money or drugs, they would never take the drugs. You can manipulate or decrease the drug taking behavior by simply providing alternatives that are attractive. If people have good jobs, responsibilities and all kinds of these things, they can shift drug-taking behavior.
What should people take away from these findings?
When you think of addiction, the one thing I don’t want people to take away from it is that addiction is not a big problem. That’s not what I want. There are people who are addicted. Their lives are terrible and ruined. People are addicted for a variety of reasons. There are a number of people that have psychiatric disorders, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders and all of those are factors. Those sorts of things can contribute to why a person has an addiction. The thing is that it is not the pharmacology of the drug that is the major sort of problem. The problems are these other things and if we work on those other things, we can decrease some of the bad behavior we see before individual lives are ruined.
