AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Democracy Now!, of course, is Pacifica Radio’s national grassroots daily election show, heard around the country. And today we’re looking at the issue of race and drugs. When you talk about drugs in this country, you have to talk about race, because of the racially charged policies, public policies, legislation that have been passed around drugs, drug use and drug abuse.

Joining us to discuss this issue are three people. My co-host Salim Muwakkil, senior editor at In These Times, joins us from Chicago. And joining us here at the studios of WPFW in Washington are two guests who are certainly authorities on this subject. Nkechi Taifa is a professor at Howard University Law School. She’s the director of the Public Service Program there and teaches a seminar called “Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System.” She’s formerly with the American Civil Liberties Union. We’re also joined by Clarence Lusane, who is a political science professor at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York, and he’s a graduate research assistant at the Center for Drug Abuse Research here in Washington at Howard University. He’s also author of five books, including Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs.

Let’s get right to this discussion. And I just want to let our listeners know that yesterday here in Washington, both Clarence and Nkechi were part of the drug abuse research seminar at Howard called “Issues in U.S. Drug Abuse Policy: Justice for All or Just Us?” Welcome, everyone, to Democracy Now!

CLARENCE LUSANE: Good day.

NKECHI TAIFA: Glad to be here.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: When President Bill Clinton nominated a four-star general as the nation’s new drug czar, he deflected growing criticism that he had surrendered in the drug war, but by naming Barry R. McCaffrey to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is euphemistically called the drug czar, he signals a further militarization of a war that really has taken its greatest toll on young African Americans. According to a report by The Sentencing Project, which is a Washington-based organization which conducts criminal justice research, the policies, quote — this is how they sum up the drug war — “The policies and practices contained within the phrase 'war on drugs' has been an unmitigated disaster for young Blacks and other minorities.” Well, to help us get a better understanding of the ramifications of this war on drugs and what change, if any, will the appointment of General McCaffrey make in this ill-fated war, we have Clarence Lusane and Nkechi Taifa. Clarence, you have written a book that deals extensively with the racial aspects of this war on drugs. How do you view the appointment of McCaffrey to this position?

CLARENCE LUSANE: It’s a very important time, I think, in looking at the way in which public policy looks at this issue of drugs. There are a lot of people who believe that the appointment of the good general is election year politics being played out. When Clinton came into office, he did two, what seemed to be, contradictory things. One was to elevate the drug czar’s office to a Cabinet post. At the same time, though, he cut the staff of that office from 146 staffers down to 25 and cut the budget to — cut the budget by $231 million. In other words, it was symbolically raised to a higher profile, while substantively the program was cut, which people basically read as a retreat and that addressing the issue of substance abuse and trafficking was not going to be a major priority of the Clinton administration — and, in fact, it wasn’t. Lee Brown spent about two-and-a-half years there, principally giving speeches around the country, and with his hands fairly tied, he wasn’t really able to kind of do much.

Now, I’m hesitant to use the term “war on drugs,” because, as you indicated, that’s been the philosophy of we’re at a war against this inanimate thing, when, in fact, what’s really been happening has been a war against people, and disproportionately people of color. And what we tried to do at the seminar yesterday was to look at, in this period, what’s going on in this so-called war on drugs. The report you mentioned by The Sentencing Project, Malcolm Young, who’s the executive director, spoke at our forum yesterday, and he talked about how the study they did four or five years ago, they talked about a quarter of young African American males either being in prison, on parole or on probation, that that has risen to about a third, and almost all driven by the so-called war on drugs. And Nkechi can talk about some of the work she’s been doing that specifically looks at what are the laws in place that perpetuate this discriminatory policy.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Nkechi, why don’t you do that?

NKECHI TAIFA: OK. Well, basically, I just want to start off by saying that, invariably, people of color are subjected to unwarranted disparate treatment at every stage of the criminal justice process, from where the police are going to be deployed, in terms of what communities, to police brutality and misconduct, to stops based on racial profiles, to the lack of diversity in jury pools, to abuse of prosecutorial discretion in matters of charging and pretrial release, to the type and length of sentence imposed. And one of the most glaring examples of racism in the criminal justice system is reflected in sentencing, particularly the sentencing for cocaine offenses. One of the main things I talked about at the seminar yesterday was the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: That has received a lot of publicity —

NKECHI TAIFA: Yes.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: — of late. And it seems on it, on the face of it, so obvious a disparity that there would be no objection to rectifying it. Why is there a dragging of feet, so to speak, in Congress?

NKECHI TAIFA: Well, specifically, that disparity is a 100 times difference. The sentences for crack are 100 times more severe than the sentences for the exact same amount of powder cocaine possession. Simple possession of five grams of crack carries a mandatory minimum sentence of at least five years in prison. Possession of the same amount of powder cocaine gives you probation, no jail time at all. Ninety-six-point-five percent of those sentenced federally for crack offenses are people of color. Now, Salim, this is despite the fact that, overwhelmingly, the vast majority of crack users are not Black. They are white. These statistics come from the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s national household survey. Yet the war on drugs has been fought mainly in the Black communities. And that is what has resulted in nearly one in three young Black men being under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system at any given time.

The experts have studied this issue. The United States Sentencing Commission was appointed by Congress to specifically study this issue of cocaine sentencing. Unanimously, they stated that the sentences for crack were too great and must be changed. Unanimously, they stated that the sentences for simple possession of crack must be the same as simple possession of any other drug, must be equal. And the majority of the commission said that the sentences for crack distribution must be equal, as well. What did Congress and the president do? They thumbed their nose at the report, from the very experts they appointed to study this issue, bowed to political pressure, and the status quo remains.

AMY GOODMAN: Was that President Clinton?

NKECHI TAIFA: That’s correct.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Political pressure, you say. What is that political pressure based on? Why is there such an — why is there this insistence that crack be treated differently than other forms of cocaine?

CLARENCE LUSANE: Yeah, I think that there were a couple things that happened in the 1980s, just in general, kind of the political shift to the right, particularly in the Democratic Party, so that it wasn’t just the Republicans who began to take a conservative, extreme conservative approach to public policy, but they were joined by the Democrats.

And in the midst of the crack explosion that happened in the mid-'80s, it wasn't just that crack was demonized, but crack users were demonized. And that became a very — that has become a very difficult kind of perspective to break. Even with the scientific evidence coming in from all quarters, from the medical community, from the legal community, that perspective has found root now. And in an election year, in 1996, where the possibility of Clinton losing to a Robert Dole because of the perceptions of where the country’s at on conservative politics and the whole new way in which public policy is constructed in the era of the Contract with America, it becomes the safe route to take the hard line that we must crack down on crime, we must crack down on drug users. And that’s going to be the approach we’re going to get in 1996, even with all the evidence contradicting that at every single level. And that means, as it has historically, that people of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos, are going to catch the brunt of these laws that have been passed.

There is another another study that was just done on the three strikes law in California that is intimately tied in with drugs, because it mainly says if you commit three violent crimes, you can be sentenced to life without possibility of parole. But under that, violent crimes also include a lot of drug crimes that don’t involve violence but involve possession of a certain amount and involves selling. And already that law has been in place about a year or so, and already they’re showing that there’s a 13-to-1 ratio of African Americans being convicted under that law, as opposed to whites. And you’ve got some places in the state where no whites have been prosecuted under the law at all. So, again, it just kind of rolls on and on and on in this period.

NKECHI TAIFA: Let me just say something about that selective prosecution, as well, if that’s OK, because not only in the three strikes — 

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Sure.

NKECHI TAIFA: — but in other areas, as well. The Supreme Court is about to decide a case dealing with an issue of selective prosecution. In L.A. County, federal prosecutors selectively pursued and charged Blacks in crack cocaine cases. Since the crack law’s inception, not a single white offender has been convicted of a crack offense in federal courts, and —

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Not one?

NKECHI TAIFA: Not one.

CLARENCE LUSANE: Not one.

NKECHI TAIFA: Not one. But the white crack offenders are steered to state court, where they’re not subject to that state’s inordinately long mandatory minimum sentencing.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Penalties are less there.

NKECHI TAIFA: And, in fact, in the case before the Supreme Court, the decision of the prosecutors to prosecute the defendant federally is significant — three years, which is what they would have gotten in state court, versus life without parole. So, the Blacks face life without parole, the whites basically a slap on — a slap on the wrist. And that is not limited to Los Angeles. It’s happening all over the country.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Nkechi Taifa, who is an attorney and director of the Public Service Program at Howard University School of Law. And we’re also joined by Clarence Lusane, who is a political science professor at Medgar Evers College and author of, among other books, Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs. I’m Amy Goodman, here in Washington, with Salim Muwakkil in Chicago. I’ve been wondering if you’ve been following the presidential campaign at all, and if the candidates have been referring to drugs in a way that’s different. Have you been surprised by the lack of reference to it and the lack of reference to urban problems at all?

CLARENCE LUSANE: Well, I think that what’s going to occur as we kind of move into the general campaign will be a lot of focus on crime. And that will again take a racial edge. And what I think the president is doing is trying to protect himself by signing these crime bills, by doing this appointment of the general to the drug czar, all of which is to say that when that comes up in the debate, “No, I have been tough on crime. No, I have tried to address this issue. We will not coddle criminals. We will three strikes out and send people away for life, if that’s what we need to do. We will allocate money to build more prisons.” So, Clinton, I believe, is protecting himself around those kinds of issues. Meanwhile, on the other side, of course, you just got — you’ve got the Republicans who are trying to figure out: How do you go past a Democratic president who basically has stolen all of our issues around crime? And so, you kind of get almost hysterical kinds of policies and proposals coming out of people on the Hill that are not only undemocratic but absolutely unconstitutional. You’ve got people who say, “Let’s abandon parole.” You’ve got people who say, “Let’s build prisons in Mexico, because now with NAFTA, we can build them down there cheaper,” and on and on and on. You’ve got people who are saying, “Forget Miranda rights.” All of these kind of proposals are coming up as a way — 

NKECHI TAIFA: Promotion of the exclusionary rule, cutting back on habeas corpus.

CLARENCE LUSANE: All trying to outdo Clinton on crime policy. So I think that’s where, in ’96, we will see some of the most wildest and ridiculous and dangerous kinds of proposals. And then, what in fact happens is, some of those actually slip through. Some of those actually do become law.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Do you see anyone arguing a more sensible course of affairs in this drug war? I mean, is there anyone who is trying to argue against the draconian trend that Clarence talked about?

NKECHI TAIFA: Well, I think that’s where our grassroots organizations need to come into play. Many of the organizations that I’m involved in, such as the National Conference of Black Lawyers, among others, have been working very assiduously to try to bring these atrocities to public attention and try to change them. On the more political, shall we say, level, the Congressional Black Caucus has, in fact, attempted to wield its voice. Many times, it’s a voice in the wilderness, and it’s really not being heard. They were ignored on the crack cocaine issue. They were essentially ignored on the crime bill debate. So it’s incumbent upon the grassroots to show — to show our clout at the ballot box,

CLARENCE LUSANE: Yeah, essentially, the Congressional Black Caucus has become a minority of the minority on Capitol Hill, so they absolutely have no platform. What I think has to happen is, when we do get opportunities for platforms, that’s when there has to be a strong united front in the African American community around these particular issues. An example I would give would be the Million Man March. Reverend Jesse Jackson at that march focused a great deal of his remarks on the disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine sentencing that Nkechi talked about. But we needed consistent voices at that platform to make that an issue, so that it wouldn’t be lost. You know, you had 80 speakers. One or two references to that are going to be lost. But to the degree the Black community forges an agenda — and this is whether it’s coming from Reverend Jesse Jackson, whether it’s coming from Mfume now at the NAACP, whether it’s coming from Donald Payne in the Congressional Black Caucus — all these people who have opportunities for national platforms have to take advantage and have to be on the same page. We need that kind of focus in order to make some breakthroughs.

NKECHI TAIFA: And what needs to happen also, we really need to look at the long-range implications of what I call the criminalization of a race. We need to look at exactly what all of this increased incarceration will end up resulting in — more Blacks having stigmatizing felony records, ensuring negative consequences for future employment. It will be virtual disenfranchisement for large segments of the African American community, where conviction of a felony results in the loss of the right to vote. You have disruption and disintegration of families, termination of parental rights, all of these resulting in incalculable damages to Black people. And I consider it the institutionalization of genocide upon Black people.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Nkechi Taifa, who’s an attorney and director of the Public Service Program at the Howard University School of Law, where they’re conducting a series of seminars on issues in U.S. drug policy. We’re also joined by Clarence Lusane, a professor at Medgar Evers College in New York and author of Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs, and, of course, Salim Muwakkil in Chicago. We’ll be back in just a minute.

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AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Again, joining me in the studio, Nkechi Taifa, Howard University Law School professor; Clarence Lusane, author of Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs, and he’s also writing a new book right now; and we’re joined in Chicago by Salim Muwakkil, senior editor at In These Times.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Clarence and Nkechi, it seems kind of ironic that the conservatives appear to be leading the way and devising new approaches on this attack on drug use with the suggestion that we legalize drugs. The National Review just did an entire issue on that particular subject. Do you think there’s any hope in that direction?

CLARENCE LUSANE: No, I don’t. I think that there’s definitely a strain within the conservative movement, some who see themselves as libertarian, actually, from Milton Friedman to others, who believe that — not that drugs are necessarily good, but that there are issues of freedom, individual freedom, that are at stake. But they are a very distinct, very small minority in the conservative movement overall, particularly — 

SALIM MUWAKKIL: But do you think — do you think their prescriptions are appropriate, the legalization and — or at least decriminalization of drug use?

CLARENCE LUSANE: Certainly, there needs to be that dialogue. And that has been something like Kurt Schmoke and others have been advocating for a number of years. And I’m one of the people who support that dialogue happening. I think that there are pros and cons to legalization, and it’s not a — I don’t support a blanket legalization, but I certainly support decriminalization of particular drugs. And I think that that’s a dialogue that will be useful and fruitful to the nation, and particularly to the African American community. But getting to more radical and alternative solutions is prevented at this point because of the strength of the conservative movement around this issue and the absolute disappearance of any liberal or progressive voices at the table as these things start to get debated around public policy. So that’s why I think that until we’re at the table, we will not get past what are some of the draconian and ultra-conservative kinds of responses.

AMY GOODMAN: I have to say, I didn’t see any mention in the corporate media, as we’ve just come out of the primary in Texas, of the fact that the Texas prison system is one of the largest in the world, and, as we move into the California primary, that the prison guard lobby in California is the second-strongest lobby in the state.

CLARENCE LUSANE: Oh, that’s absolutely true. I mean, one of the things that people have been referring to lately is the jail-industrial complex. And what we see with that is this whole move towards privatization of jails as they grow and grow and grow, and states basically cannot afford to build prisons anymore. Even the most conservative Republican governors have started to back off, because they recognize that they’re just busting the budget. In California, for example, it was estimated two years ago, before the three-strikes-and-out law was passed, that they would have to build 12 prisons between 1995 and the year 2000. With the three strikes law, that estimate was shot up to 36 prisons. Now, that’s just an amazing, unbelievable amount of diversion of funds from virtually everywhere to build prisons, that basically produce nothing for society at all. So I think that you’ve got that kind of process going on that is shaking up the whole system.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m still thinking about your comment, Clarence. Private prisons in Mexico for U.S. prisoners?

CLARENCE LUSANE: Absolutely. This was from one of the new Republicans on Capitol Hill, I believe, from South Carolina, who said that, you know, with NAFTA, that means that we now can put prisons in Mexico that can be run cheaply. We don’t have to deal with this lobby of parole officers and prison workers, and that, when the issue was raised, “Well, you know, don’t they, like, speak Spanish? And wouldn’t that be a hardship on the families?” and the response was, “Well, prisoners don’t need to know Spanish. You know, they’re in jail.” I mean, but that’s the attitude, you know, from take away the barbells, take away color televisions. You know, it’s a very dehumanized, very brutal kind of philosophy that’s driving all of this.

NKECHI TAIFA: And put in the chain gangs.

CLARENCE LUSANE: And the chain gangs are back.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s not forget the chain gangs. How big is this movement?

NKECHI TAIFA: Oh, it’s definitely increasing. And I consider this another example of the militarization of just what is going on here. Clarence was talking about the prison-industrial complex, which basically replaced the military-industrial complex of earlier years. And the prison industry is becoming a multimillion-dollar industry. And to continue to feed and fuel it, these repressive, harsh, draconian laws are continually being passed.

CLARENCE LUSANE: And you’ve got —

SALIM MUWAKKIL: I was in rural Illinois a few weeks ago, and they just announced that a prison was going up in their proximity, and there was a big parade in town celebrating.

NKECHI TAIFA: Money. Big money.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Clarence. You were going to say?

CLARENCE LUSANE: Yeah, I was going to say: And when you look at who’s investing in these prisons, you’ve got American Express, you’ve got General Electric, you’ve got Merrill Lynch, Prudential, Smith Barney. You have some of the largest multinational corporations in the world who are investing in prisons, who, coincidentally, are also some of the largest donors to the Republican and Democratic Party and to congressional candidates and to presidential candidates. So it all kind of comes together as part of a mosaic of corporate-conservative ties, that the consequences are that people suffer, who don’t have — who are not part of that game, who aren’t at those meetings, aren’t at that table.

And I think that, you know, in terms of where do we kind of go, and what we talked about at the forum yesterday, one of the things that people have been calling for has been for an urban summit. From the day that Clinton got elected, he had the economic summit between the time he got elected and the time he took the oath. People have been calling for an urban summit because 12 years of Reagan and Bush basically meant that the cities were absolutely abandoned and left to their own limited and shrinking resources. Clinton never done that, did not do that, and it’s unlikely that he’s going to do it this year. So, I think then it becomes incumbent upon progressives, upon Black leaders, whether it’s the NAACP, whether it’s the National African American Leadership Summit, whether it’s the Congressional Black Caucus, to pull that together, because there are people around the country, in every community, who are trying to address this issue and have come up with some very innovative and working solutions, but have not had the ability to network and the ability to make this a national issue.

AMY GOODMAN: Kweisi Mfume of NAACP, is there any signs that he would be calling for something like this?

CLARENCE LUSANE: At this moment, that has not been something that he’s talked about. But I think it’s incumbent on people to push him in that direction. NAACP would be an excellent venue to bring together people around the country who are doing this work.

NKECHI TAIFA: One of the things that I think needs to be looked at in some sort of urban summit is U.S. drug policy and just who they’re targeting. Their professed priority is the targeting of major drug trafficking organizations, major drug kingpins and the like. But the reality is that the enforcement has been primarily waged against low-level street dealers. And the Sentencing Commission’s report said that 60% of those arrested for crack offenses are the low level, at the very bottom of the drug distribution network, yet they are receiving sentences that are longer than their wholesale suppliers who supply the powder cocaine from which the crack is produced. There really needs to be a change and a shift in U.S. drug policy, and it needs to be changed from a militaristic approach to one that deals with addressing some of the root causes and root causes of crime.

AMY GOODMAN: How can people get in touch with you, if they’re interested in this issue, they want to get some kind of mobilization going, push leaders at the top to start dealing with this, demanding that they deal with this? How do they reach you?

CLARENCE LUSANE: Well, they can reach the Center for Drug Abuse Research, and we can link them up with resources and information. They can reach us at area code 202-806-9219. That’s 202-806-9219.

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s the Drug Abuse Research seminar at Howard University.

NKECHI TAIFA: And they can reach the National Conference of Black Lawyers, which has been very active on these criminal justice issues, at 202-234-9735, 202-234-9735.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you very much for joining us. We’re going to continue to this discussion, both domestically and also in terms of foreign policy. Where is the money going abroad when the president talks about the war on drugs? Is it going actually to fight drugs, or is it going to repressive, sometimes military, and often civilian backed by military, regimes that, in fact, are doing the drug dealing themselves? That’s another issue — 

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Good point, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: — we’ll discuss on Democracy Now! Well. Salim Muwakkil, thanks for joining us from Chicago, senior editor at In These Times and co-host of Democracy Now! And we also want to thank Clarence Lusane, political science professor at Medgar Evers College, his book — get it, read it — Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs, and Nkechi Taifa, attorney and director of the Public Service Program at the Howard University School of Law. You’re listening to Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.