Drugs and crime are undeniably linked. Not only are manufacturing, distributing, and purchasing drugs illegal, but the misuse of drugs often increases the need and likelihood of committing additional criminal acts. Overwhelming evidence indicates a connection between drug misuse, criminal activity, and arrest. However, the nature of the relationship is complex, and no one explanation or pathway accounts for everyone's experiences with drug misuse and crime.

The criminalization of drug use has long been the official policy of the U.S. government. The prevailing viewpoint of the addiction that drives drug use and the associated criminal activity is largely through a criminal, rather than medical, paradigm; the people addicted to drugs who commit crimes are not sick or ill but offenders in need of punishment, not treatment.

Characterizing the U.S. War on Drugs are increased penalties for crimes associated with so-called hard drugs and narcotics. With the crack epidemic of the 1980s largely subsided, today law enforcement pursues not only drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and marijuana but also methamphetamine and designer drugs such as Ecstasy. The focus of criminal justice policy is on crimes committed in association with drug use, whether driven by the pharmacological effect of the drug, an economic need to obtain more of the drug, or violence committed while participating in the illegal drug market. Perhaps the most significant characteristic of the War on Drugs is its well-documented differential impact on society's poor and nonwhite.

The criminalization of U.S. drug use parallels the sociopolitical events in the country's history. Drug use as a federal crime began with the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 that taxed the manufacture, importation, and distribution of opiates and coca. Motivated by the government's desire to control opium users after seizing the Philippines at the end of the Spanish-American War, Congress expanded the act in 1924 to include the importation of heroin. At that time the United States was experiencing an influx of immigrants who brought their culture, including their patterns of drug use, with them. Asian immigrants introduced opium to the United States, and Mexican immigrants brought marijuana. With the societal belief that blacks favored cocaine, the false image of a crazed black man, high on cocaine and raping white women, helped fuel the public's moral panic.

The government's leading spokesperson for the criminalization of drug use was Harry J. Anslinger, who served as the first head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, later the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), from 1930 to 1962, and fervently promoted the criminal model of addiction. Through a series of improper research studies, false testimony given to Congress, and successful use as a legal defense, marijuana became known for inducing insanity and homicidal tendencies in users. The 1937 Marijuana Tax Act made it illegal to distribute marijuana without a stamp or license from the federal government. Because the government would not issue stamps, this essentially made marijuana illegal, punishable by a significant fine and prison term. The Boggs Act of 1951, passed during the cold war and while the country was fighting the Korean War and motivated by fear that the enemy was using drugs to sabotage the country's youth, increased penalties for drug crimes fourfold. The Daniel Act of 1956 followed the first televised Senate hearings on the topic of organized crime in the United States and increased penalties eightfold. In Virginia, for example, conviction of rape mandated a 10-year sentence, whereas drug possession mandated a 20-year sentence.

Despite the increasingly severe punishment of drug crimes, use of illegal drugs skyrocketed in the 1960s as the country faced cultural upheaval and challenges to the status quo. President Lyndon Johnson's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, referred to as the President's Crime Commission, and comprising criminal justice experts, members of law enforcement, and authors from across the country, culled scientific research regarding crime and the criminal justice system response. According to the commission's 1967 report, crime resulted from poverty and social disorganization, thus requiring increased integration and services to provide support to offenders and those at risk of offending. During the 1960s and early 1970s these policy recommendations began to take hold within the criminal justice system. The seemingly enlightened tone of the report and the political era may have influenced passage of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, more commonly known as the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, the first piece of legislation to reduce penalties associated with drugs. It also classified drugs, except tobacco and alcohol, according to their medical use and potential for misuse.

Shortly after passage of the Controlled Substances Act, 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater inserted the fear of street crime into national politics. Although Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon returned to the message in 1968 and laid the foundation for a get-tough era in the White House that culminated with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Reagan declared a national war on drugs in 1982 and called for its renewal in 1986. The Reagan and first Bush administrations increased funding for law enforcement budgets, pouring resources into international drug interdiction and domestic programs that ranged from increased drug testing in the workplace to assigning more law enforcement officers to pursue drug crimes. President Reagan initiated the expansion of criminalization to private or casual drug use, arguing that society should not have to bear the burden of anyone's addiction. However, with prisons funded by tax dollars, the public did not escape responsibility for drug addicts. Between 1985 and 1995 the number of state prisoners convicted of a drug crime increased 478 percent and accounted for 35 percent of the total increase in the overall prison population during that time. At the federal level, drug offenses increased 446 percent and accounted for 74 percent of the increase during the same period.

The federal government maintained pace with the changing drug scene. A powerful tool in that effort is the Controlled Substances Analogue Enforcement Act of 1986 that enables drug enforcement officials to bypass traditional administrative requirements and immediately classify a substance as illegal. The Chemical Diversion and Trafficking Act of 1988 empowers the DEA to regulate the distribution of the chemicals and equipment often used to manufacture illegal drugs. Similarly, the Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act of 1996, in addition to increasing the penalties associated with manufacturing and distributing the drug, regulates the chemicals and equipment most commonly used in its production. More recently, GHB, often referred to as the "date rape drug," and the weight-loss drug ephedrine, were classified as controlled substances.

The control of drugs and crime expanded beyond any one political orientation. The 1994 Violent Crime Control Act, sponsored and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, increased penalties for drug crimes and provided states with funding if their inmates convicted of violent crimes served at least 85 percent of their sentence. Despite society's concern with violent crime, contemporary drug laws are such that people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses can serve sentences longer than those who commit violent street crimes.

Ample evidence shows that the increased penalties for drug crimes have had disproportionately negative effects based on race and class. Differential punishment of drug users, based on the type of drug, as incorporated into the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, established harsh mandatory sentences for possessing less than $100 worth of crack, a relatively cheap drug viewed as favored by poor urban dwellers. Until 2007, federal law set the sentence for possession of 1 gram of crack at the equivalent of that for 100 grams of cocaine, an expensive drug favored by wealthier, white drug users. Research shows that differential treatment continues in the courtroom, where, among those convicted of drug felonies in state court, whites are less likely than nonwhites to be sent to prison and generally more likely to receive shorter sentences when they are punished. Nearly half of all state prison inmates serving time for drug offenses are black; whites and Hispanics each make up about one quarter of state prison inmates. Nonwhite drug users would appear to be over-represented in the criminal justice system as, according to self-report studies, nearly three quarters of drug users are white; blacks represent approximately 15 percent and Hispanics about 10 percent of U.S. drug users.

Bibliography:

1) Boyum, David and Mark Kleiman. 2003. "Breaking the Drug-Crime Link." The Public Interest 152:19-38.

2) Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2005. "Drugs and Crime Fact Sheet." Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

3) McBride, Duane C., Curtis J. VanderWaal, and Yvonne M. Terry-McElrath. 2003. The Drugs-Crime Wars: Past, Present, and Future Directions in Theory, Policy, and Program Interventions. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.

4) National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. 2006. "'You've Got Drugs!' Prescription Drug Pushers on the Internet: 2006 Update." New York: CASA.

5) Roth, Jeffrey. 1994. Psychoactive Substances and Violence. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.

6) Rydell, C. Peter and Susan Everingham. 1994. Controlling Cocaine. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

7) Sabol, William J. 2007. Prisoners in 2006. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

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