Drug Decriminalization in Maryland Through an African Centered Research Paradigm- Analysis and Recommendations

Introduction - Beyond the “Standard Model” of the “Decriminalize Drugs” Argument
Since the 1930s, when Harry Anslinger led federal efforts to criminalize drugs through the
1937 Marijuana Tax Act, and then aggressively enforced prohibition under the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics (the precursor to the DEA), drug prohibition enforcement has been a staple of American
governance (Hari, 2016). Federal policy trickled down to state policy, claiming the harmful social
and public health impacts of drug use warrants an aggressive expansion of the “War on Drugs.”
With the notable exception of a short period in the 1970s where cannabis decriminalization was
pursued, state and federal governments have continued to enforce drug prohibition aggressively.
(Alexander, 2010). From its outset, with Anslinger conjuring fears of Mexican marijuana
intoxication, creating the threat of violence, and targeting Black jazz musicians with explicitly
racialized justification, the War on Drugs has had disproportionate impacts on racial minorities.
Despite making up approximately 30% of the nation's population, minorities make up 80% of
federal convictions on drug charges and 60% of state and local drug convictions (Drug Policy
Alliance, 2016). Despite this hyper incarceration, rates of addiction and drug crime have primarily
remained static despite the American prison population exploding by over 700% from 1970 to
2010 (Flatow, 2014). The impacts on communities of color have been expansive, and a full
accounting of the harmful effects are beyond the scope of this project.
Within the past 20 years, America's War on Drugs has faced a new development - the
expansion of a widespread “opioid epidemic” - which has swept the nation. While created by a
multitude of factors, the epidemic is largely seen as a confluence of economic malaise in broad
swaths of the country, especially Appalachia and the Southern United States; the massive
expansion of prescribed opioid-based painkillers such as Perdue Pharmaceuticals “oxycontin,” and
the availability of less expensive heroin from Mexico (Quinones, 2015). Unlike the cocaine
epidemic of the 1980s, this opioid epidemic produced a massive increase in overdose deaths,
including in white communities, which largely avoided the worst impacts (both addiction and
police crackdowns) of the cocaine panics of the 1980s and 1990s. Opioid overdose deaths have
more than quadrupled from 2000 to 2019 (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2020). Visions of
young men and women withering away under the grip of opioid addiction shocked the nation,
leading many to wonder what radical interventions were needed to address this crisis.
These historical realities create the environment for what one could call the “standard
model” of drug decriminalization. This model is an intellectual intervention to the ideological
“common sense” powering of the previously established narrative around the War on Drugs. In a
nutshell, it might sound something like the following:
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