Those who are felons for violating drug laws at best are hurting only themselves and at worst are helping other people hurt themselves. and property felons deserve incarceration, but those who are felons for violating drug laws at best are hurting only themselves and at worst are helping other people hurt themselves. They don’t deserve to have their lives destroyed. approximately half of all federal prisoners, about 81,900 people, have a drug charge as their most serious offense. But most prisoners in the United States are in state prison, where about 15% of the inmates, or 197,200 people, are serving time for drugs. But there are many ways someone can be caught up in the criminal justice system other than going to prison. In 2017 there were over 1.6 million arrests for drug violations, which makes it the largest category of arrests by a substantial margin. Of those arrests, 85% were for possession only. For those who did not see substantial jail time, probation or other types of supervision were likely. In 2016 there were approximately 3.7 million people In 2016, the last year for which comprehensive data are available,
on probation, with a quarter of them (about 900,000) serving for drug offenses. Finally, as always, arrests and incarceration for drug offenses fall disproportionately on minority populations. Of all the arrests for drug violations in 2017, 46.9% were black or Latino. Again, this is despite roughly equal drug-use rates for whites, blacks, and Latinos. That’s the title of a remarkable book from 1938 written by Dr. Henry Smith Williams. Williams excoriated the effects of the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act in no uncertain terms. The law’s only effects were to raise up an army of dope smugglers and peddlers; to increase the company of drug addicts; to change thousands of self-supporting, law-abiding citizens into outcast derelicts and petty criminals; to crowd court calendars and jam the corridors of prisons; to inaugurate an era of persecution of sick people; and to impose on the country a tax- burden of at least a billion dollars a year. Nearly 80 years later, little has changed. While the move toward marijuana legalization has been a welcome development, we need to do more. Treating drug addicts like human beings is a good first step. DRUG ADDICTS ARE HUMAN BEINGS
Trevor Burrus is a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and in the Center for the Study of Science, as well as editor-
in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review . He is also the co-host of Free Thoughts a weekly podcast that covers topics in libertarian theory, history, and philosophy.
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