Peer-reviewed
Why Has US Drug Policy Changed So Little over 30 Years?
Abstract Though almost universally criticized as overly punitive, expensive, racially disparate in impact, and ineffective, American drug policy remained largely unchanged from 1980 to 2010. Marijuana is an important exception: policy and law underwent many changes, with the strong likelihood of more, involving increased legal access to the drug, in the near future. For cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine there has been an almost relentless increase in the numbers incarcerated for drug offenses, rising from about 50,000 in 1980 to 500,000 in 2010. The disparities in African American imprisonment rates are higher for drug offenses than for other types of crime; some of this disparity results from unjustifiably harsher sentences for crack than for powder cocaine offenses. The battles necessary to achieve even modest reductions in these disparities and other overly severe sentencing regimes at the state and federal levels demonstrate how difficult it is to achieve changes in drug policy. Recent reforms in health care at the federal level offer hope for increased access to treatment services, but otherwise only drug policy rhetoric has changed much
Article, 2013
Crime and Justice, 42, 20130801, 75
2013