CSUN On Point

In a population of more than 320 million American citizens, The Prison Policy Initiative estimates around 2.3 million of those citizens are incarcerated in local, state and federal prisons. Of those, more than 433,000 are serving time in federal prison for drug-related offenses.

According to NAACP, African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of Caucasians. Combined with the Hispanic population, these two minority groups comprise around 58 percent of all prisoners, even though they make up around 25 percent of the U.S. population.

“The whole criminalization of drugs really impacts minorities more than anybody else,” said Jane Bayes, CSUN political science professor. “Those are the people who are being picked up for drugs and targeted for drugs… I’m not even sure they’re the major consumers of them [though], because many whites are not targeted in the same way by law enforcement.”

According to The Sentencing Project, more people are incarcerated today just for drug-related crimes, than for all crimes in 1980.

“To a certain degree, you may look at racial profiling and stereotyping [as the reason], depending …[on the]…law enforcement agencies concerned,” said Los Angeles Harbor College political science professor Van Chaney. “I still think that is a problem within law enforcement.”

Chaney said minority groups are incarcerated at higher rates for a variety of reasons, such as lack of good legal representation, dysfunctional families and communities, and low income.

“We are all familiar with the zip code 90210,” Chaney said. “If you have a helicopter in that area at two in the morning … compared to say, Figueroa and King … who would the DEA’s office probably take the case with? Would it be at 90210, compared to South LA or at least South Central LA? Just the name itself changes [things]. I mean it’s that discrepancy that affects, unfortunately, a lot of minority groups.”

The Sentencing Project also reported that people of color make up about 37 percent of the U.S. population, but comprise 67 percent of the total prison population. A TIME study estimates black youth are arrested for drug crimes at a rate 10 times higher than whites, but whites are more likely to abuse these drugs.

Another controversy is the increasing privatization and profitability of prisons. According to the Drug Police Alliance, federal and state governments have spent over $1 trillion on the so-called war on drugs over the past four decades, relying on tax dollars to pay the bills.

“To me, one of the biggest problems is we’ve made prisons into money making operations,” Bayes said, “and that provides all kinds of new incentives to fill the prisons and to keep them [full,] too.”

Private prisons make a huge profit from incarcerating drug offenders, according to the NAACP, mainly due to the mandatory minimum sentencing put in place for drug possession. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average prison sentence for federal drug offenders is more than 11 years. According to the VERA Institute of Justice , the total cost to house prisoners ranged from $14,603 in Kentucky, to $60,076 in New York, per inmate each year. Critics suggest taxpayer dollars are not being well spent, considering that more than two-thirds of all incarcerated prisoners will return to prison within three years of being released.

The debate over the war on drugs is an ongoing one among many Americans, who are concerned about how their tax dollars are spent. Considering the high rate of recidivism, and how much money is spent to imprison drug offenders, many question whether the criminal justice system of prisons is a big business, or a new form of slavery, or both.

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More and more people are using prescription drugs for reasons not intended by their doctors.

Prescription pain medications kill more than 20,000 people in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s more than heroin and cocaine overdoses combined.

Dr. Stan Galperson, Director of Residential and Outpatient Programs at Tarzana Treatment Centers said that while these prescription drugs are addicting they do have legitimate uses.

“Where would we be without pain relief? I mean you go under the knife and surgery and you come out and you just take a couple of aspirin? I don’t think so,” Galperson said. “They all have legitimate purposes, but you know the potential of abuse is pretty high.”

Addicts are willing to go to extreme lengths to hide their addiction. However, there will usually be clues that may give the addicts away.

Ali, who wants to remain anonymous, has been clean and sober for 5 and 1/2 years. She said she believed she was doing a good job in keeping her secret hidden.

“I thought I was hiding it, but at the end it came out,” she said. “I lost a lot of weight, my hair was falling out, my skin was yellow. I didn’t think anything was wrong.”

While no one decides to get addicted to prescription medication, many wonder what these drugs have that make them so addictive for some people.

“They alter your brain chemistry,” Galperson said. “The drugs themselves is not what gets you high, it’s the manipulation that takes place. But what happens is after months and years of abuse, you alter your brain chemistry, and so now you are depleted, and using the drugs helps you feel normal again. It just becomes a vicious cycle. It’s really hard to break.”

According to the CDC, drug overdose has become the leading cause of injury death in the United States. Every day more than 100 people die as a result of drug overdose and close to 7,000 are treated in emergency departments.

“I got to a point where I no longer wanted to be alive,” Ali said. “I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror anymore, and the only thing I knew how to do, the only solution I had, was to take drugs or drink alcohol to not feel. I numbed myself out. I didn’t know how to deal with life on a daily basis.”

One part of California Proposition 46, on the ballot this November, requires health care practitioners to consult the state prescription drug history database before prescribing certain controlled substances.

“That part of the bill I like,” Galperson said.  “Addicts and alcoholics are very manipulative people, so it’s nothing to go from one doctor and get a prescription and go across the street to another doctor and get a prescription. If my doctor knows I’m already being prescribed over here, it will limit access. I think that’s smart and we have the technology, so we should go ahead and do it.”

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