U.S. Surgeon General Antonia Novello has been quietly but aggressively carrying on an important initiative that deserves public notice and praise. Many AOD activists in the African American community and other communities of color have been vocal in their criticism of the "war on drugs" approach taken by both the Reagan and Bush administrations because of its twin focus on illegal drugs and interdiction/law enforcement strategies-strategies that have been implemented at the expense of more comprehensive prevention programming and earnest efforts to dramatically boost the availability of quality treatment options.
Until "drug czar" Martinez' recent reversal of his predecessor's policy, the U.S. Office of his predecessor's policy, the U.S. Office of Drug Policy carefully avoided even talking about alcohol or tobacco, the legal drugs that have justifiably been at the center of much of our collective prevention efforts because they remain the biggest public health threat and the biggest gateway to illegal drug use that health threat and the biggest gateway to illegal drug use that our young people face.
Novello has thrown her influence and her considerable energy into alcohol abuse prevention since she took office. When alcohol policy activists confronted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms over their failure to adequately enforce advertising and labeling regulations in the case of Cisco, (a fortified wine), Powermaster, (a malt liquor), and, most recently, St Ides (malt liquor), Novello was quick to step forward with strong, timely statements in support of their forward with strong, timely statements in support of their efforts. Her support was deemed critical by many who were at the center of these particular battles.
This past summer, Novello released a report on youth access to alcohol that was prepared by the Office of the Inspector General. The study revealed that there are serious deficiencies in existing minimum age drinking laws and enforcement practices in nearly every state- deficiencies that allow the almost 7 million underage drinkers we have in this country to routinely walk into stores and buy their own alcohol.
Black prevention activists are well aware that in the African American community, it has always been easier for black youths to buy alcohol because of the traditionally lax attitude of many shopkeepers, a factor that has complicated many of their best efforts.
Novello has challenged the states to examine their own policies and deficiencies and get serious about addressing the problem areas they uncover. The Surgeon General also called for public support for underage drinking laws, stressing the need for a dramatic change in public attitudes toward this issue.
Novello has also been "front and center" on the issue of alcohol advertising aimed at youth. "I must call for industry's voluntary elimination of the types of alcohol industry's voluntary elimination of the types of alcohol advertising that appeal to youth on the basis of certain lifestyle appeals, sexual appeal, sports appeal or risky activities, as well as advertising with the more blatant youth appeals of cartoon characters and youth slang," she said at a press conference in November as she released the third report in a series on underage drinking. Adding that "Alcohol advertising never communicates the true consequences of drinking or its health risks," Novello called previous industry efforts at self-regulation vague, narrow, and inconsistent.
Surgeon General Antonia Novello's efforts have been commendable, and with support as well as pressure from activists, those efforts are becoming even stronger and more focussed. Novello's advocacy deserves to be recognized and publicly applauded.
Institute on Black Chemical Abuse, Scope, Fall 1991
Treatment and Prevention Work!
an editorial by David Grant
Recently, we were asked by both the local and national press to comment on a decision rendered by a Hennepin County (greater Minneapolis) judge, Pamela Alexander, that a Minnesota law mandating stiffer penalties for possession of "crack" than for possession of powdered cocaine is unconstitutional. "Cocaine is cocaine," said Alexander, voicing serious protest over what she sees as a fundamentally racist law enforcement policy that doles out disproportionately heavy sentences on blacks because blacks are more likely to be arrested for "crack" possession, while whites are more likely to be arrested for possession of powdered cocaine.
In Minnesota, for instance, 1988 figures show that 92.3 percent of the people convicted of "crack" possession were black, while 85.1 percent convicted of possessing powdered cocaine were white. Our colleagues around the country tell us they believe similar numbers hold for their own areas.
Add to this clear color and class demarcation line the fact that blacks are also disproportionately arrested for drug-related offenses (in Minneapolis, the figure for 1989 was over 75%), and what emerges is a clear threat to constitutional guarantees of equal treatment and protection under the guarantees of equal treatment and protection under the law.
The other side of the coin is that the terror of drug-related violence and crime also falls disproportionately on the black community, and no community is more anxious to see real progress made in the "war on drugs." But that progress must not come at the expense of justice and common sense. As we have said many times, the "war on drugs" must not be allowed to degenerate into a war on minority communities. In too many cases around the country, it already has.
The good news is, we believe, that there are answers; the bad news is that none of them are quick, or easily achieved. There seems to be broad consensus in the African American community that attention to the improvement of education, economic development, and a resurgence of cultural pride and the spirit of self- determination, all will play a positive role in helping the African American community throw the scourge of drugs off its back. Those are long-term goals that will require the lifetime commitment of all of us. To those who want to know what can be done right now that both delivers results and is cost- effective, we say let's reverse the way we allocate our war on drugs resources. Let's maintain a viable law enforcement effort, but let's put the lion's share of our resources into treatment and prevention.
Why? Because treatment and prevention work. In most states, when a person is jailed or imprisoned for a drug offense, or for a criminal offense they committed while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, there is little or no case follow-up that forces them to deal with their substance abuse problem. People caught in the downward spiral of addiction are released into communities caught in their own downward cycle, fed principally by the ravages of the drug trade.
We know how to help addicts break that downward spiral. That's the role of treatment. We also know how to help many people avoid going down that road in the first place. That's the role of prevention. And any way you care to "break it down," the cost of delivering these services to an individual is substantially less than the cost of incarcerating someone-not to mention more effective and humane. At the Institute, we continue not only to support the promotion of these options as the primary strategies in our national effort against drug abuse, we continue to promote the option of culturally-specific treatment and prevention. Only when the cultural context in which peoples' addictions develop is fully taken into account can prevention or treatment programs work at their fullest potential.
We applaud the hard work our colleagues in the field are doing to educate policy-makers and the public about the need to make the resources we have to offer more available to those who are in such critical need of them.
Institute on Black Chemical Abuse, Scope, Winter 1991
The African-American and Alcoholism
Most treatment programs have difficulty in addressing alcoholism among African Americans which creates a serious state of denial regarding the impact of the disease on this population. While concern is focused on the severe destruction caused by crack/cocaine and other illicit substances, alcohol continues to destroy individual lives and families in the African-American community at a greater proportion than all illicit drugs combined.
Alcoholism has been known by medical and mental experts to be the number one health, mental health and social problem among African-American in this country. This is clearly evident as one observes the close correlation between alcoholism and the other major issues that impact African Americans: unemployment, violence, crime, homelessness, poor health care, high rates of child abuse and neglect, and family stability.
In addition, African Americans receive poorer health care, often having limited access to health facilities. Not only does this population have higher rates of cirrhosis of the liver and pancreatitis, but the African Americans are more likely to die in alcohol-related accidents or homicides. In the low income communities, the hospital emergency room is often the most frequently visited health facility; yet many African Americans enter with a primary or secondary diagnosis of alcoholism which may not be detected or treated.
Treatment programs that provide services to African American communities have a responsibility to address the unique cultural, historical and psychological characteristics of this population. Counselors need to be cognizant of the diversity of African American peoples, their experiences, and their lifestyles. Members of the African American community come from all over the world. They may be from Caribbean islands such as Jamaica, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Barbados, the Virgin Islands, or Haiti. They may also be from countries in South America or Latin America such as Belize, Guyana, or Brazil. Others may have been born in Africa or Europe and later migrated here. Even the African Americans from the United States have diverse experiences and culture depending on the geographical region (e.g. the South, the North, the West, etc.)
It is important to be able to trace the drinking patterns historically for African Americans. It has been recorded that slave-owners frequently gave liquor to their slaves and encouraged them to drink heavily over weekends as a means to prevent slave uprising. Weekend drinking is still a mainstay in this population, especially among low income persons. Just as drinking patterns vary from urban, suburban and rural areas, so too do they differ depending on the social class of its men (lower, middle, working, upper).
Counselors must look at the uniqueness of the African American family, its strengths and struggles for survival. Clinicians must be aware of the serious impact that oppression and racism has on the family system as evidenced in the manner which African Americans respond to alcoholism as a disease. There are ongoing issues of trust and mistrust of the treatment arena. It is essential to understand the adaptability of family roles and how "family" includes the extended family as immediate kin. With this awareness, one can understand why and how alcoholism is often tolerated as a stress reducer for many African Americans.
There must also be an understanding of the diversity of the African American community and its formal and informal networks, which have been past and present sources for help. They include: the Black Church and other religious groups, civic groups, clubs, fraternities and sororities, and respected business persons such as the barber, the beautician, tavern owners, and physicians.
If a counselor or agency is committed to treating African American alcoholics and their families, then they must be willing to develop a culturally sensitive treatment program which must identify and address those issues that are unique to African Americans. The treatment design must take into consideration the following regarding African Americans:
Billboards and Minorities
Advertising is everywhere. It's in our mail boxes. We see it in newspapers and magazines, on radio and television, even on toys, matchbooks, and t-shirts. In the eyes of many Americans, billboards are one of the most intrusive and offensive forms of advertising.
Blacks and Latinos are particularly hard hit by tobacco - and alcohol- related health problems. Blacks suffer disproportionately high rates of heart disease, cancer, and liver cirrhosis. For example, Black males have a 45 percent higher death rate from lung cancer as compared to White males.
Likewise, cirrhosis mortality is twice as common among Black males as it is among White males. In some urban areas, the rates are three to twelve times higher for Black males. Alcohol problems are also a significant health problem in many Latino communities.
Because of the impact of smoking and drinking on the nation's health, the widespread promotion of tobacco and alcohol products has come under intense scrutiny. As part of his war against smoking, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop charged that, "Cigarette companies are increasingly targeting their marketing efforts at Blacks and Hispanics."
Cigarettes are the most heavily advertised product in America. Alcoholic beverages are second. Of the top ten outdoor advertisers, tobacco companies have ranked first for the last three years, and tobacco is the fastest growing segment of the outdoor advertising industry.
The Institute of Outdoor Advertising estimates that in 1989 $421 million will be spent by tobacco companies on outdoor advertising. Cigarette ads represent almost one-third of all outdoor advertising expenditures. Beer, wine, and liquor producers will spend an estimated $111.3 million in 1989 on outdoor ads, putting them in fifth place.
Research indicates that both the tobacco and alcoholic-beverage industries have targeted low-income neighborhoods with special advertising campaigns.
There are a number of reasons why billboards have been singled out advertising for special attention.
Billboards are impossible to ignore. No one is forced to read alcohol or tobacco ads in newspapers or magazines or to watch commercials on television. When these ads appear on billboards, they are unavoidable.
Children are particularly susceptible to billboards. Before they can read or legally purchase alcohol or tobacco, children enjoy looking at the world around them. Some of the role models they cannot avoid seeing include larger-than-life-size athletic figures promoting drinking and giant cowboys smoking cigarettes. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, "Most smokers start as teenagers and then become addicted." Alcohol is the drug of choice for youth. Billboards promoting smoking and drinking are not helping to curb drug problems among children.
The billboard industry doesn't self-police where billboards are located. Most magazines and newspapers aimed at younger readers do not accept tobacco or alcoholic-beverage ads. The billboard industry exercises no such restraint. They put billboards anywhere and everywhere they can--next to homes, elementary schools, churches, parks, playgrounds, health centers, sports stadiums, and shopping centers. Because the billboards are everywhere, kids are constantly bombarded with messages promoting smoking and drinking.
Billboards target low-income, inner-city neighborhoods. Many low-income neighborhoods are saturated with billboards advertising tobacco and alcoholic beverages. In several studies, the disproportionate number of billboards located in poorer neighborhoods has been documented. For example, a 1987 survey conducted by the City of St. Louis found twice as many billboards in Black neighborhoods as White ones. What's more, while almost 60 percent of the billboards in Black neighborhoods advertised cigarettes and alcoholic beverages, only 36 percent in White neighborhoods did.
Billboard health warnings don't exist or are impossible to read. Alcohol billboards don't carry any health warnings at all. "Health warnings on cigarette billboards cannot be read," according to a recent study by the U.S. [1mOffice on Smoking and Health.[37;0m While Americans are bombarded by billboard ads for cigarettes, they can almost never see the health warning. Health warnings simply can't be read during the few seconds a motorist has to observe a billboard from a moving car. Unless motorist stop their car, get out, walk up to a billboard and read it, the health warning is impossible to detect.
Billboards reinforce drinking and smoking as social norms. One way to keep smokers smoking and encourage drinking is to reinforce cues to smoke and/or drink in as many places as possible. Billboards do this very well. A consumer may briefly glance at a magazine ad, but in a neighborhood saturated with billboards, the consumer may see the same ad as often as 30 times a day, every day of the week. Going to school and coming home, or playing outside at recess, children get the message that the way to be happy, glamorous, or athletic is to smoke and/or drink.
Citizens' Action Handbook on Alcohol and Tobacco Billboard Advertising Edward T. McMahon and Patricia A. Taylor
Institute on Black Chemical Abuse
Materials and Resources for Professionals
A Thin Line: Recognizing Cultural Differences in Chemically Dependent
Black Clients / video This half hour program is structured around a live presentation by IBCA's former director Peter Bell. With the aid of short vignettes Bell gives a thorough introduction to some of the unique clinical needs Blacks bring to treatment with them. The information this video tape offers will help any program deal with Black clients more sensitively and effectively. Cost: $175.00 plus $3.00 postage & handling.
Drawing The Line / video Comments by Peter Bell, counselors, and people in recovery address specific concerns of Black clients as they go through the treatment and recovery process. Cost: $175.00 plus $3.00 postage & handling. Cost: $2.00
Social Policy/Prevention Booklet (Revised edition 7/90) By Anthony Neeley and David Grant This booklet describes IBCA's community-based approach to the development of alcohol and drug abuse prevention strategies. Its concepts are widely applicable and are adaptable for use in any community. Cost: $2.00
Chemical Dependency and the African-American: Counseling Strategies and Community Issues By Peter Bell This book, cataloged as part of Hazelden Foundation's "Professional Education" series, is a guide for any chemical dependency professional who is looking for more effective ways to work with Black clients. The book also provides insight on alcohol and other drug abuse in the black community as well as community based strategies for change. (This new publication replaces Counseling the Black Client.) Cost: $4.95
Black Beautiful and Recovering By Gloria McGee with Leola Johnson This booklet, published by Hazelden Press, is a most helpful guide for Black people who are in the process of recovering from alcohol or other substance abuse problems. It is equally useful to their families and friends who want to understand what recovery is all about and be supportive. Cost: $1.00
Alcohol and Drug Abuse in Black America: A Guide for Community Action By Vivian Rouson A booklet giving a description of the history and the current manifestations of alcohol and drug problems in Black America, with a discussion of strategies for fundamental change. Cost: $3.00
Marketing Booze to Blacks / book George Hacker, Ronald Collins and Michael Jacobson with afterward by Peter Bell Published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, this book details how the liquor industry targets the Black population with its advertising. Cost: $5.00
Drug Free Zones: A Manual By Diane Neeley and David Grant This booklet describes a variety of strategies concerned citizens are using to reclaim their neighborhoods from rampant drug abuse and dealing. The information presented will help prevention activist design such programs for their own localities. Cost: $2.00
Marketing Booze to Blacks/ new video Coproduced by: IBCA and the Center for Science in the Public Interest This video describes the health and social consequences of alcohol abuse in the African American community, and how advertising is specifically aimed at this community seems to affect the usage of and attitudes towards alcohol. (17 minutes). Cost: $79.00 for agencies with budgets of over $50K and $29.95 for grass root magencies with budgets under $50K
Developing Chemical Dependency Services for Black People / a manual By Peter Bell, BoisSan Moore and Donna Peterson This manual has been developed to address many of the questions asked by new or expanding programs as they establish new culturally specific initiatives for African-American clients. Cost $30.00 plus $3.00 postage and handling.
For more information, contact:
Institute on Black Chemical Abuse 2616 Nicollet Avenue South Minneapolis, Minnesota 55408 (612) 871-7878[37;0m
African Americans and Alcohol in 1990
an editorial by David Grant
Somewhere in the midst of all the great hue and cry over the "war on drugs," a very important fact has been consistently overlooked: the biggest single drug problem we have - bigger than all the other drugs of abuse put together - is alcohol. Some years ago, the National Black Alcoholism Council declared alcohol to be the number one health problem in black America. Recent data from the Office of Minority Health and from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism confirm that this is still just as true today. The devastation that the trade in illegal drugs has wreaked in low-income black communities is readily apparent, but data on the multi-drug use patterns of black addicts from treatment programs suggests that even if we had some kind of magic wand we could wave that would make all illegal drugs disappear from our neighborhoods tomorrow, we would still have a mammoth, stubborn problem on our hands.
Although our best national data indicates that African Americans drink less per capita than whites, African Americans suffer disproportionately from alcohol related problems. Deaths from cirrhosis and chronic liver disease are twice as high for blacks as they are for whites on a national basis. Studies on specific neighborhoods like Shaw in Washington, the Eastside in Detroit, or Harlem in New York done by local health departments, reveal rates ranging from three to eleven times the national rate among whites.
A 1988 U.S. Department of Justice study revealed that over a lifetime, a black male is twenty-eight times more likely to die by homicide as a white male. Local and national law enforcement data stretching back into the last century shows that nearly half of all homicides, serious assaults and fatal accidents of all kinds involve alcohol. Smaller studies of specific neighborhoods or police precincts link an overwhelming majority to alcohol abuse.
Health and Human Services Department data shows that between 1979 and 1981, the rate of esophageal cancer for black men was fully ten times greater than the rate for white men. Alcohol is believed to be a major culprit in the development of this cancer.
The list goes on and on. But the lion's share of public attention is squarely focused on the blight of illegal drugs. In the black community, that attention has principally manifested itself in the form of extremely aggressive law enforcement. Consequently, many blacks feel an anxious kind of double jeopardy in which the cure - a war on drugs that increasingly feels like a war on us - is in some ways just as untenable as the problem it was meant to address.
At the Institute on Black Chemical Abuse, we are working with the communities we serve to keep the focus on the whole problem, and to move forward with an agenda that promotes strategies based on building community awareness and community empowerment. We challenge all our colleagues in the field to join with us in seizing the opportunity offered to us by "war on drugs" activity to do the broad-based public education that must be done. Let's work to ensure that anti- drug funding gets funnelled increasingly into prevention and treatment, and let's make certain those prevention and treatment programs have culturally- specific components that speak to the real world experience of the people they are designed to serve. Let's not let alcohol abuse get lost in the shuffle.
Roundtable of Experts at Joint Center for Political
Studies Looks at Black Males and The Drug Trade
Many would argue that much of the current "war on drugs" strategy implemented in the African American community has been based on inaccurate or incomplete information about what is really happening "on the street" in African American communities. Some research has painted a picture of the inner-city drug world not substantially different from the commonly held perception that the average dealer is an avaricious non-user who moves freely in and out of the drug dealing world as it suits him, making large sums of money whenever he chooses.
Recently, the Joint Center for Political Studies, an African American "think tank" based in Washington, D.C., released a report summarizing the proceedings of a special roundtable convened at the Joint Center in the Fall of 1989 to discuss the intertwined problems of poverty, drugs and crime. Their report, based on the cutting-edge street level research carried out by a distinguished panel of experts tells a more complex story. We reproduce below most of an article about the aforementioned roundtable taken with the Joint Center's permission from the May issue of their magazine "Focus."
Black Males and the Drug Trade: New Entrepreneurs or New Illusions?
by Katherine McFate
Research Associate, JCPS
One of the most disheartening aspects of the crack epidemic is that the carriers of the plague so often come from within the communities victimized by it. The drug dealers on the corner are not strangers. They are kids from the neighborhood, a workmate's child, a cousin, a nephew, a son.
Drug selling appears to be one of the few growth industries in poor inner-city communities. If media images are accurate, it offers an attractive alternative to low-wage, unskilled employment for disadvantaged black and Latino men, pulling them out of the legitimate labor market. Yet what do we really know about the opportunities and costs of entering the drug trade? What financial rewards does it offer to an adolescent in a poor neighborhood? What proportion of inner-city minority youths are involved in drug trafficking? Is dealing drugs a pathway out of their chronic poverty or just one more dead-end in lives already "nasty, brutish and short"?
Estimates of the number and proportion of central-city residents involved in drug dealing are difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, most of the researchers thought that it is reasonable to assume that about one in every six or seven youth in central-city neighborhoods sells drugs regularly. For example, a recent Rand Corporation study by Peter Reuter predicts that 16 percent of all black males in Washington, D.C., will be arrested and charged with drug selling before the age of 21.
Dealer's Wages: Poor for Most
Estimating the amount of income gained from illegal acts is difficult as well. Some researchers warn that when dealers discuss their income they are often giving figures for the "best day/best week" rather than an average or median over time. Income gained from drug dealing varies widely, depending on the time, effort, and skill of the individuals involved. Nonetheless, the researchers offered tentative estimates from their studies of street sales in New York City and Washington, D.C.
According to Phillippe Bourgois, an ethnographer from San Francisco State University, crack house workers in the East Harlem neighborhood that he studies make $50 to $75 for an eight-hour shift (or 50 cents a vial). Ansley Hamid said that street sellers in his New York City neighborhood received drugs on consignment; their sales were typically supervised by two "runners" who each earned about $100 for a 12-hour shift.
Clearly, there are those who make far higher sums in the trade. In a Rockefeller-funded study of several hundred adults arrested for selling drugs in Washington, D.C., street-level dealers reported that they could make $740 to $1000 a week. Much of this trade was conducted in the evenings, part-time, as a significant number of those arrested for dealing had legitimate day jobs. But Bruce Johnson of Narcotic and Drug Research, Inc. argued that probably "less than 20 percent of the people engaged in drug dealing have a net-worth cash return of as much as $1000 a month. Probably less than five percent of all people who deal drugs have a cash income that allows them to purchase expensive cars."
Big profits in the drug trade do not come until one reaches a mid-level sales position. This includes the "beeper boys," so called because of their reliance on beepers and cellular phones, who have built up enough of a regular cliental to retire from direct street selling. Customers call them directly to make appointments for buys.
In any case, most street-level dealers cannot hold onto the profits from dealing because they are drug users themselves. Up until about 1985, research consistently showed that most of these dealers had been drug abusers who began selling to support their habits. But this has changed. More than half of the 1,000 crack users Fagan [sociologist, Rutgers University] and Johnson interviewed in New York City over the past two years sold cocaine before they began using crack.
Despite the rules many drug-dealing gangs have against narcotics use by members, a high proportion of young dealers appear to get "seduced by the pipe" as they grow older. "Initially, when kids get involved in (selling) crack, they start out as non-users," said Rickman [Steve Rickman, Office of Criminal Justice]. "But as they stay involved over a period of time they become users." While only 25 to 30 percent of the 13 to 17 year-olds arrested in Washington, D.C., test positive for drugs when apprehended, among older arrestees the figure jumps to 70 percent. And among adults arrested for selling drugs, 90 percent reported that they were regular drug users.
The Search for Effective Deterrents
The threat of arrest is not an effective deterrent for those involved in or contemplating drug dealing. Among one group of adolescents in Washington, D.C., who admitted to selling drugs, fully one third reported prior arrests. Fagan said that literally all of the crack users in his New York City survey had been in jail. Bourgois remarked that for some people in some inner city neighborhoods, going to jail is "a rite of passage, a definition of adulthood." Laurie Gundst, a journalist who is writing about West Indian drug posses, described an incarcerated Jamaican posse leader in New York City who said he was "lucky" to be in jail because he was safer there, given the violence on the street.
It is the violence of the drug trade that frightens off many prospective young dealers. Respondents in an Urban Institute survey of about 400 adolescents in Washington, D.C., said they believed a drug dealer was more likely to be injured or killed over the course of a year than to go to jail. (Given the overload on the criminal justice system, this may be an accurate assessment.) More than one in four of the youths said he had carried a concealed weapon; more than one in five said he had been part of a group that attacked or threatened another individual; and five percent had shot, stabbed, or killed someone. When the young people were asked why they had stopped dealing or had not gotten involved in drug dealing at all, they typically responded that it was because they had witnessed first-hand the impact of drug-violence--like the shooting death of a friend or relative.
The Policy Implications of the Research
Several facts directly challenge the way policy makers and the public tend to view the drug problem. First, drug users/abusers and drug sellers are not two distinct populations and should not be treated as such. Many sellers are on the street to support a habit. Investing in more prevention, education, and treatment programs could reduce the number of sellers on the street by reducing their own need for the drug (as well as the general demand).
Second, jail is not an effective deterrent for the drug dealing population. Given the violence in the streets, jail (especially in local correctional institutions and juvenile detention centers) is too often viewed as a rest rather than as punishment.
Third, job training and employment programs could appear very attractive to those in entry-level positions in the drug trade. In corporate-style gang organizations, the large sums made from dealing drugs are not trickling down to the lowest echelons. After some months of risking the violence on the streets for a relatively low return, a good number of street dealers might be willing to try the legitimate labor market if given the opportunity.
Finally, policy makers need to think about intervention that offers constructive alternatives and safe havens to the children in drug-infested neighborhoods. Carl Taylor decried the fact that drug dealers are widely admired and emulated by youngsters there. He worried about the values these children would have as adults, and warned that when "children (are) nurtured on hate and rejection and isolation" we will all eventually pay for their neglect as crime, violence, and dependency increase.
Copies of the full report, "Crime, Drugs, and Urban Policy" are available from the Joint Center for Political Studies, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20004, (202) 626-3500.