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Charting Race and Class Differences in Attitudes Toward Drug Legalization and Law Enforcement: Lessons for Federal Criminal Law

NCJ Number
174467
Journal
Buffalo Criminal Law Review Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Dated: 1997 Pages: 137-174
Author(s)
T L Meares
Date Published
1997
Length
38 pages
Annotation
Data from the 1987 General Social Survey were used to compare the attitudes of black and white persons regarding drug law enforcement and drug legalization.
Abstract
The research focused on attitudes toward the legalization of marijuana and the harshness of courts. The survey was part of an ongoing project of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and collected information from an independently drawn sample of English-speaking adults living in the community in the continental United States. Results revealed that most participants, including African Americans, did not favor the legalization of marijuana in 1987. At the same time, most participants, including African Americans, favored harsher courts for criminal offenders. However, blacks as a group were less likely than whites to conform to the get-tough position than were whites; they were also much more likely than whites to exhibit ambivalence in their opinions about drug law enforcement. Findings offered lessons for policy makers about the opinions, attitudes, and ideas of disadvantaged blacks, the segment of the population that bears the brunt of both gang drug wars and the government's war on drugs. Attention to these findings is especially important given that current drug policy is unlikely to reflect the opinions of disadvantaged blacks. Policymakers should also understand that the complex opinions of blacks on drug law enforcement are likely to reflect the often low levels of social organization in communities with drug problems and that drug law enforcement has the potential to improve community social organization by alleviating problems associated with drugs. However, current Federal drug law enforcement policy and local policies that mimic it are dangerously misguided, because they are more likely to rip apart community fabric than strengthen it. Tables, figure, and footnotes