Racial drug-enforcement disparity traces directly to a deliberate mid-1980s policy pivot

Evidence

The observed changes in the intensity and racial disparities in drug law enforcement are largely due to policy changes adopted as part of the “War on Drugs” of the mid-1980s. Following the cocaine-related deaths of two prominent athletes, Don Rogers and Len Bias, and the associated growing public concern about crack cocaine use, federal policymakers launched a new War on Drugs. Unlike previous drug wars that focused on source countries (e.g., crop eradication), transportation routes (e.g., disrupting the “French Connection”), and interdiction at the borders, the drug war of the mid-1980s added domestic, street-level drug enforcement as a new front (see, for example, Boyum & Reuter, 2005; Musto, 1999). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1059

Categorization

• SEED: An article angle: how a moral-panic-triggered policy choice (not underlying behavior) manufactured the racial disparity that reads today as evidence of innate group difference.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘enemy-construction sustains solidarity’ research frame - the drug war as manufacturing an enemy class.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 1059