The ‘War on drugs’ is a war on Black people

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Yesterday a reluctant Home Office released their own findings that showed the UK’s draconian measures against drug users do not reduce drug use. Indeed the research indicated that those countries with less harsh measures were more successful in reducing drug misuse.

It was a landmark moment because all the evidence suggests that whilst a heavy handed approach might look good politically, the practice is worse than ineffective.

But within that broad discussion about rethinking our approach to drug’s policy, something else emerged, not new, but shockingly under reported...the UK’s ‘War on drugs’, is a war on young Black men and women.

Dr Julian Huppert MP, a leading figure in the campaign to reform our drugs policy, told the House of Commons:

“We have huge problems with discrimination. For black and minority ethnic groups, the use of harder drugs is lower, but arrests are higher and they are twice as likely to proceed to court than white people. That is not right; we should not be doing that. With more than half of stop and searches being for possession, even the Home Secretary has acknowledged the problems that can result from that.”

Huppert is right. In Hackney alone during August and September some 4,000 Stop and Searches were drug-related. This equates to more than half of the local police ‘Stops’ .

As he says, Black people use drugs less than whites, if for no other reason than the cost involved. And yet the behavior of our police and the workings of the Criminal Justice system are stacked against Black people.

The system turns a blind to the celebrity, media, middle class drug use, while picking on and severely punishing Black youths, many of whom then begin the depressingly common downward spiral of unemployment, alienation, reoffending and being on the police radar as easy targets.

Also speaking during the debate was Hackney’s Diane Abbott. She commented on her own experience helping Black women in Holloway Prison, many of whom, she said, go there drug free and come out with a drug addiction.

Black and minority ethnic communities up and down the country must be acutely alive to the implications of this debate. The reality is that many young men and women will at some point experiment with drugs. Too often when a white graduate is caught with the Class A drug , they are cautioned and can continue with their careers, whilst a young Black man with some weed is criminalised with all the implications that has for their future.

Simon Woolley

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