SAVING WOMEN'S LIVES -- The Dogwood Center, Princeton, NJ, USA

6.	aids prevention: ENDING RACIAL PROFILING

In many cities and states across the United States, the failure to make needle exchange programs legal means that the laws limiting access to sterile needles are being enforced and causing the spread of AIDS.

Racial profiling has meant that black injecting drug users are more likely to be stopped and searched than are white users. Thus, racial profiling has also made carrying sterile needles substantially more risky for black than white users.⁽¹⁾^, ⁽²⁾

Evidence for racial profiling is substantial and growing:⁽³⁾

	The U.S. Justice Department has appointed an outside monitor to oversee the New Jersey State police as part of an effort to end that state's acknowledged discrimination against minority motorists.⁽⁴⁾
	A report from the New York State Attorney General's office found that blacks and Hispanics are much more likely than whites to be stopped and searched by New York City police officers, even when the numbers are adjusted to reflect higher crime rates in some minority neighborhoods.⁽⁵⁾
	The American Civil Liberties Union has filed lawsuits challenging police profiling in eight states.⁽⁶⁾
	Racial profiling is a key concern of the N.A.A.C.P.⁽⁷⁾

The FBI arrest data offer an indication of how racial profiling is affecting people who use the two most commonly injected drugs, heroin and cocaine. Among whites, there were five arrests per year per 100 users of heroin and cocaine in 1996; among blacks, there were 20 arrests per 100 users. In other words, the arrest rate for black users was four times higher than the arrest rate for white users.^{(8), (9)}

No research has ever shown that making needle possession illegal has been effective in reducing drug use in the United States. However, needle possession laws have succeeded in making sterile needles scarce, causing the spread of HIV, hepatitis C and other bloodborne diseases. Thus, abetted by racial profiling, the denial of access to sterile needles has become a major factor in the spread of deadly diseases.⁽¹⁰⁾

Spreading HIV/AIDS among African Americans who inject drugs is not the deliberate policy of any state government or police department. But, by restricting access to sterile needles and by targeting black drug users for arrest, that has been the result. Among those who inject drugs, African Americans are five times as likely as whites to get AIDS.⁽¹¹⁾

This must be changed. We need drug law enforcement that promotes the public welfare not law enforcement that causes the spread of an incurable disease among African Americans or any other group.

Footnotes

(1) In neighborhoods with heavy injecting drug use, laws prohibiting the possession of drug paraphernalia are a major reason needles are sometimes seen lying around in public areas. People who inject drugs have discarded the needles in haste, as they have tried to avoid being arrested. A study in Ohio in 1993 found that 73 percent of the 276 active drug injectors interviewed feared carrying needles because of drug paraphernalia laws. See R. G. Carlson, H. A. Siegal, J. Wang, and R. S. Flack, "Attitudes Toward Needle 'Sharing' Among Injection Drug Users: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods," Human Organization, 1996, vol. 55, pp. 361-69.

(2) Sameul L. Groseclose, Beth Weinstein, T. Stephen Jones, Linda A. Valleroy, Laura J. Fehrs, and William J. Kassler, "Impact of Increased Legal Access to Needles and Syringes on Practices of Injection-Drug Users and Police Officers - Connecticut, 1992-1993," Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes and Human Retrovirology, vol. 10, pp. 82-29. Alice A. Gleghorn, T. Stephen Jones, Meg C. Doherty, David D. Celentano, and David Vlahov, "Acquisition and Use of Needles and Syringes by Injecting Drug Users in Baltimore, Maryland," Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes and Human Retrovirology, vol. 10, pp. 97-103. Jean-Paul C. Grund, Douglas D. Heckathorn, Robert S. Broadhead, and Denise L. Anthony, "In Eastern Connecticut, IDUs Purchase Syringes from Pharmacies but Don't Carry Syringes," ," Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes and Human Retrovirology, vol. 10, pp. 104-5.

(3) Brent Staples, an editorial writer for the New York Times, has pointed out some of the key consequences of racial profiling apart from the spread of HIV:

Criminologists have argued for decades that racial profiling plays a central role in the fact that black Americans make up a disproportionate part of the prison population. Drug cartels have long since grasped this point, minimizing the use of nonwhites as couriers and using people who look like mild-mannered suburban housewives whenever possible.
Police departments have historically justified profiling by arguing that it leads to valid arrests. But the practice also exempts from scrutiny the vast majority of drug users and couriers who are by definition non-black. The race-based practice catches some of the guilty, but it violates the lives of many more innocent people, undermining law-enforcement credibility in minority neighborhoods. Finally, the myth that drug crime is a "black" problem, confined to ghettos, allows the culture to deceive itself about the vast scope of the epidemic.

Brent Staples, "Why Some Get Busted - and some Go Free," New York Times. May 10, 1999. page A22.

(4) David Kocieniewski, "U.S. Will Monitor New Jersey Police on Race Profiling," New York Times. December 23, 1999, page 1.

(5) Kevin Flynn, "Racial Bias Shown in police Searches, State Report Asserts," New York Times. December 1, 1999, page 1.

(6) Page 16. American Civil Liberties Union, Driving While Black: Racial Profiling on Our Nation's Highways, by David A. Harris. June 1999.

(7) Paul Zielbauer, "Racial profiling tops N.A.A.C.P. Agenda," New York Times. July 11, 1999, page 23. For further discussion of this issue, see Marcia Davis, "Traffic violation: racial profiling is a reality for black drivers." Emerge, June 1999, pages 42-48.

(8) According to unpublished tabulations provided by the FBI, in 1996 there were 150,000 arrests for possession of heroin and cocaine among whites, and 127,000 arrests for possession of heroin and cocaine among blacks. In 1996, there were 3,106,000 whites who used heroin or cocaine in that year and 638,000 blacks. This makes for an arrest-to-possession ratio of about 5 in 100 for whites and 20 in 100 for blacks. The drug use data are from U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Population Estimates 1996, July 1997, Tables 4B, 4D and 18. See also Ricky N. Bluthenthal, Alex H. Kral, Jennifer Lorvick, and John K. Watters. "Impact of Law Enforcement on Syringe Exchange Programs: A Look at Oakland and San Francisco," Medical Anthropology, vol. 18, 1997, pp. 1-23. Also, Ricky N. Bluthenthal, Alex H. Kral, Elizabeth A. Erringer, and Brian R. Edlin. "Drug Paraphernalia Laws and Injection-Related Disease Risk Among Drug Injectors," Journal of Drug Issues. vol. 29. no. 1, pp. 1-16.

(9) For a broad discussion of race and class in the American criminal justice system, see David Cole, No Equal Justice, New York: The New Press. 1999. 218 pages.

(10) Peter Lurie and Ernest Drucker, "An opportunity lost: HIV infections associated with lack of a national needle-exchange programme in the USA, Lancet, 1997, vol. 349, March 1, 1997, pp. 604-8. Discrimination by pharmacies plays a role in preventing African Americans from getting access to sterile needles. There is evidence from St. Louis, for example, that drugstores will not always sell syringes to African Americans even when selling syringes is legal. University of California. 1993. The public health impact of needle exchange programs in the United States and abroad. The Summary volume can be found in two parts: (A) the "Executive Summary" and (B) the "Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations." Peter Lurie, Arthur L. Reingold, et al., San Francisco: University of California. Volumes 1 and 2 are available from the National AIDS Clearinghouse, at 1-800-458-5231.

(11) Based on the number of AIDS cases reported in 1997, according to the CDC and an analysis by Day and Cohen of household and nonhousehold drug use as reported by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Population Estimates for 1991-1994. See Dawn Day and Reuben Cohen, "Race and the Spread of HIV/AIDS Related to Injection Drug Use," Princeton, NJ: Dogwood Center, April 1996, 11 pp. Confirming support for this relationship comes from a CDC survey of HIV seroprevalence among persons in drug treatment in 1991 and 1992. In that study, the median HIV seroprevalence for blacks was 18.4 percent; for whites it was 3.8 percent. CDC, National HIV Serosurveillance Summary: Results through 1992, vol. 3, p.19.

For a list of other materials used on this website, see References.