NE: You write that the 1970s “marked the birth of America’s racial double standard on drugs” and that cocaine is the drug that best illustrates that. Could you briefly explain that double standard?
DXR: We use terms like “experimentation” for casual drug use by white people. White drug addicts are treated mostly as tragic figures who stayed at the party too long. People of color—Black people in particular—aren’t given that kind of grace and understanding. Take marijuana, for example: Black and white people use it at the same rate, but Black people are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for possession. That’s a double standard. Cocaine illustrates it even better, because the “crackhead” caricature applied most often to drug users of color stands in such stark contrast to the glamorous image of white cocaine users that emerged in the ’70s. In my research, I came across dozens of ads for luxury cocaine paraphernalia—crystal vials, spoon pendants, gold razors—that ran in major fashion magazines. That was the ’70s, but the idea of powder cocaine as a glamour drug in white hands continues today. The idea of crack users as zombies continues, too, despite it being the same substance.
NE: Kurt Schmoke, whom you were talking about earlier, has a really interesting role in the book. You were talking about how he stood out as an early adopter of decriminalization as a strategy, and how he was addressing connected issues like illiteracy and poverty. But you also used him as a contrast with other states’ policies and with White House drug policy during the Nixon and Reagan administrations, which fueled the crack epidemic and mass incarceration. What do you make of the fact that so many of the architects of the crack epidemic are still in office and people like Kurt aren’t?
DXR: It’s disheartening to me—not just that they’re in office, but that while in office, they haven’t done much to repair the harm of the era. Joe Biden, for example, is one of the leading architects of our mass incarceration system—he was a part of leading really every crime bill since the early ’80s all the way up to the 1994 crime bill under Clinton. Biden has given apologies and said that he regrets his role in mass incarceration. But we still, for example, have an 18-to-1 disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine. That’s something that he can end tomorrow; that’s a federal law. For me, the fact that those people are still elected is a symbol of the fact that they haven’t been held accountable. A part of that accountability is not just whether or not they stay in office, but also what they do if they want to stay in office.