Drug war tagets young minorities
Back in the 1960s a phrase often repeated went something like this: "If you're white, you're all right; if you're brown, stick around; if you're black, stay back."
This phrase aptly describes how the drug war relates to race when it comes to youth. The most recent data available (2001) support this idea. For instance, looking at national detention rates for juvenile drug offenders the rate (per 100,000) for whites was 3; for Hispanics it was 8; for blacks it was 22. In other words, black youth were more than 7 times more likely to be detained that white youth and almost 3 times more likely than Hispanics. Hispanic youth were almost 3 times more likely than whites to be detained.