Jonah Goldberg’s provocatively-titled column this week (“What If Mexicans Were Crack?) is puzzling. He begins by comparing immigration to the Drug War, noting that in both cases, government is attempting to violate the laws of suppy and demand through brute force.

Fair enough. But he falters a bit here:

Charges of racism echo each other in both debates as well. Somehow, it’s the fault of those favoring border security that most illegal immigrants are Mexicans and the fault of drug warriors that minorities are disproportionately in the drug trade.

I think the racism charges in the immigration debate have more to do with those who oppose immigraton from Mexico but welcome immigration from, say, Europe (note, I’m not advancing that charge — there are far more compelling arguments against the anti-immigration position).

As for racism and the Drug War, Goldberg’s mistaken. Proportionately, blacks represent a far higher percentage of those incarcerated for drug crimes than they do of drug dealers and users. According to a DOJ survey in 1998, a black man is more than 50 percent more likely to get prison time when charged with the same drug offense as a white man. In 1986, the federal government initiated mandatory minimums for crack cocaine (the form of cocaine favored in black communities) but not for powder cocaine (the form prefered by whites). In 1990, Congress exacerbated the disparity — the new law, introduced by Sen. Jesse Helms, meant a drug offender would have to possess 50 times as much powder cocaine to get an equivalent sentence for possession of crack, despite the fact that there’s no difference in the chemical makeup of the two drugs. The result: The averge federal drug sentence for blacks stands at about 49 percent higher than the average drug sentence for whites.

From there, Goldberg’s column gets more bizarre. Drawing on his immigration-crack comparision, Goldberg then chastises advocates for drug leagalization for their inconsistency on the immigration issue. He writes:

Some drug legalization advocates hang their position on a lot of moral preening about the absolute right of the individual to do what he wants. But many of the same people will then argue that it is – and should be – an outrageous crime to hire an illegal immigrant.

To read Goldberg’s take, one would think most drug reformers are anti-immigration. That’s just not the case. Most prominent opponents of the Drug War I can think of also hold fairly liberal views on immigration. Perhaps there are a couple of people who fit Goldberg’s description (my guess is that they work at National Review), but it’s not a dichotomy that’s all that prevalent in the drug reform movement, or among libertarians. And I certainly don’t think there are enough people holding both views to merit an entire column attacking them.

Goldberg goes on:

Most opponents of the drug war came to their position because they consider the effort worthy in principle, but ultimately futile in the face of a more determined “enemy,” and a bit silly since the gains of winning aren’t that important to them.

No. Most opponents of the drug war aren’t utilitarians. Most came to our position because drug laws create consensual crimes, because we don’t feel it’s the government’s responsibility to tell it’s citizens what they can and can’t put into their bodies, and because it’s certainly not the government’s function to enforce those laws by throwing people in prison, and by eviscerating the Bill of Rights.

The vast majority of us also see no reason why the government should prevent willing laborers from freely contracting with willing employers.

In other words, there’s no inconsistency here.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 19th, 2006 at 10:16 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.