Mostly black crack cocaine addicts serving long prison terms are not getting the same rehabilitation and court diversion options as today's new heroin addicts.
There are an estimated 128,000 heroin addicts in New Jersey. The use of heroin here and across the nation has reached epidemic proportions, with 129 Americans dying from overdoses daily.
Recently, addicts reportedly have been using heroin cut with carfentanil, an opioid analog used to tranquilize large animals like moose and buffalo. This has prompted an aggressive plan to provide assistance and relief to New Jersey's addicts.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., has described the heroin epidemic as "an American problem," although it seemingly has taken its highest toll on the white community.
Congressional hearings were held recently to identify the causes of addiction and to learn what policy changes could be made to increase treatment effectiveness. One major shift has been to recognize and treat heroin addiction from a public safety perspective, instead of using the criminal justice system. By keeping police, prosecutors, and judges out of the process, incarceration is avoided and the focus is solely on treatment and rehabilitation.
Earlier this year, during his State of the State address, Gov. Chris Christie pledged $100 million toward mental health and substance abuse treatment, and expressed his desire to reopen a former state prison as a rehabilitation center. A commitment for $100 million can provide many addicts a second or third chance at staying clean and enjoying a productive life. The governor explained this initiative by saying, "Addiction is an illness and is something we can beat... we can find the true measure of our compassion."
I agree with the governor, but I also recognize some hypocrisy and racial dynamics at play concerning drug dependency. Consider the blatant absence of compassion when the black community was hit hard by the crack cocaine epidemic starting in the 1980s. Inner-city neighborhoods were saturated with cheap, highly addictive, crack cocaine.
Interestingly, crack is the only drug for which a first offense for possession can trigger a mandatory sentence under federal criminal charges. Possess five grams, serve five years in the penitentiary. The average federal sentence for a low-level, first-time convicted crack cocaine seller is 10 years and six months.
The impact of race and ethnicity on different approaches to the same problem cannot be avoided or dismissed. Under federal statutes, it takes 500 grams of powdered cocaine -- favored by white users and sellers -- to get sentenced to five years, even though the pharmacology of crack and powdered cocaine is the same.
Possession is a crime that every single drug user commits and, in our nation, the overwhelming majority of drug users are white. Yet, most white drug users manage to avoid arrest and incarceration.
In New Jersey, a majority of black inmates in federal or state prison were sentenced for a crime somehow attached to addiction. But with $100 million in taxpayer dollars, more of the new generation of opiate addicts, a majority of whom are white, will avoid prison due to state-sponsored decriminalization and rehabilitation.
It is good that the current heroin epidemic will not result in mass incarceration. It is good that society has progressed to the point where so many will have the opportunity to obtain needed treatment. Families will not be broken up and thrust into poverty due to the loss of income for a decade or more.
But, the question remains: What about the thousands of imprisoned crack addicts whose circumstances when arrested were similar to those of today's heroin addicts? These crack addicts did not not receive the compassion or rehabilitative services that many would have welcomed.
If addiction is an illness, as Gov. Christie states, the majority-black crack cocaine addicts now doing time should be provided the same opportunities for rehabilitation and freedom as the current majority-white heroin addicts.
To do otherwise is systemic discrimination at its worst, and the issue needs to addressed.
Milton W. Hinton Jr. is director of equal opportunity for the Gloucester County government. He is past president of the Gloucester County Branch NAACP. His column states his personal views, not those of any organization or agency. Email: mwhjr678@gmail.com.
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