Attorney General Garland’s Racist Lie About Crack Cocaine
Attorney General Garland’s Racist Lie About Crack Cocaine
To racialists, everything is about racism.
By Daniel Greenfield
When the Biden administration isn’t destroying borders, killing jobs and sexually mutilating kids for social justice, it’s pushing drugs for social justice.
I wrote about the whole crack vs cocaine debate earlier this week. The short version is that lefties claim that the crackdown on crack, which took place at the behest of the black community, was about racism.
Pro-crime activists are convinced that crackheads are unfairly discriminated against in sentencing. They argue that there’s a sentencing disparity between powder cocaine and crack cocaine users. And that since the latter are more likely to be black, the disparity is racist.
The disparity is real and has nothing to do with race. Crack cocaine offenders have the highest recidivism rates.while the stockbrokers powdering their noses in the bathroom have the lowest rates. The former are also a whole lot more likely to assault you randomly on the street.
The sentencing guidelines for meth are the same ones that pro-crime campaigners for crack dealers have complained were racist. The crack cocaine guidelines continue to be watered down and, if the Senate RINOs bail out crack dealers, then meth will have the 1-to-100 sentencing disparity with crack cocaine. If the crack cocaine disparity was racist, why isn’t the meth disparity racist? While black people made up 88% of crack cocaine offenders, whites represent 48% of methamphetamine offenders while black people made up only 2.5%.
But the Left has accepted it as dogma that efforts to restrict crime are evidence of systemic racism.
And if they have to blatantly lie, well they will. They lie as easily as they breathe anyway.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday instructed federal prosecutors to end charging and sentencing disparities in cases involving the distribution of crack and powder cocaine, after decades of law enforcement policy disproportionately treating crack offenders more punitively.
Proponents of treating crack dealers more punitively have argued that the drug in crack form is faster-acting and capable of producing more-intense highs.
Which is undeniably true. Or at least undeniably to anyone who isn’t a member of an administration that denies the existence of women and the rights of children.
So this one’s easy.
Garland’s memo cited Justice Department testimony last year to the Senate Judiciary Committee that sentencing disparities are “simply not supported by science, as there are no significant pharmacological differences between the drugs: they are two forms of the same drug, with powder readily convertible into crack cocaine.”
That’s not what the DOJ’s own site says.
As far as science goes, here’s Duke University Medical Center’s Pharmacology Education Partnership, soon to be memory-holed now that science contradicts woke dogma.
Research in the fields of drug abuse, pharmacology and psychology indicates that the period of time between the introduction of a drug into the body and its ability to produce euphoria or pleasure is important in the abuse potential of that drug. Cocaine produces its high within seconds when smoked as crack; but it takes several minutes to produce a high when snorted. Furthermore, cocaine leaves the brain very quickly after smoking stops, so the cocaine high produced by smoking does not last very long. In fact, crack cocaine users often experience a depression or “crash”, so they repeat the process. This can occur many times (binging). When snorted, the cocaine enters the brain more slowly since it must travel throughout the circulatory system first. The high lasts longer because the cocaine enters the brain over a longer period of time compared to when it is smoked. The user does not repeat the process as readily and the potential for abuse or addiction3 is not as strong compared to the user who smokes the free base. South American Indians obtain cocaine orally by chewing the coca leaf. As discussed above, relatively little cocaine reaches the brain and mild effects are produced slowly. The abuse liability of this form of cocaine is low.
It’s not about race, it’s about method. Crack addicts go downhill much more rapidly and are more unstable. They have less self-control and would be more qualified to work for the Biden administration.
The crackdown on crack was not about race, but the same people who falsely inject racism everywhere are determined to embed their big lie here.
To racialists, everything is about racism.