Book Review: Provine, D. M. (2007). Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 207 pp

• Date: 01 June 2009
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016808326189
• Published date: 01 June 2009
• Author: Deirdre M. Warren
• Subject Matter: Articles

Book Reviews 269

Provine, D. M. (2007). Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press. 207 pp.

DOI: 10.1177/0734016808326189

Doris Marie Provine’s book aims to “investigate the possibility that racism and fear of a

restive underclass explain the persistence of the American war on drugs” (p. 7). Informed by

a social constructionist perspective, she discusses the roles of the legislature, law enforce-

ment, judiciary, and the media in creating drug use as a social problem and in developing what

has become a predominant reliance on punitive drug control policy that disproportionately

affects marginalized populations in this country. In doing so, Provine emphasizes the central

role of racism, once overt and now mostly unconscious, in the development of America’s drug

control policy. In addition, she places the current war on drugs, begun in the 1980s around the

issue of crack cocaine use, in an historical context that begins with a discussion of the temper-

ance movement and the development of various state laws that eventually led to national

Prohibition in the 1920s. Provine contends that “punitive prohibitionism has been the domi-

nant approach in dealing with drugs favored by minority populations throughout U.S. history,

even before the nation was founded” (p. 32).

Provine opens the book using a 1994 federal court case (United States v. Clary, 846

F. Supp. 768) involving a young, inner-city, African American male as an exemplar of the

racialized nature of drug legislation. The judge in the case, Clyde Cahill, challenged the man-

datory minimum sentences that punished possession of crack cocaine much more harshly

(100:1 ratio) than possession of powdered cocaine. The issues raised by Judge Cahill, that is,

the role of unconscious racism in the development of current legislation and the validity of

using racial impact to assess that legislation, are issues further explored in the book.

A major strength of this book is the historical perspective Provine brings through a

detailed, thoroughly researched analysis of the role of racism in the development of

American drug-control policies. She accomplishes this through the examination of case

law, congressional record, and other official and historical sources. Provine begins her

analysis with 1920s Prohibition (chapter 2) and continues with an examination of efforts to

criminalize the use of opium, marijuana, and cocaine (chapter 3). The analysis is completed

in the final three chapters with an examination of the process of initiating and implementing

the 1986 and 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Acts addressing the manufacture, distribution, and

possession of crack cocaine (chapter 4); the refusal of Congress to modify the legislation

despite its obvious racial impact (chapter 5); and the constitutional challenges to the legis-

lation raised by a number of judges beginning in 1987 (chapter 6). This structure provides

for a logical, systematic examination of the issue, a strong argument for the influence of

racial prejudice throughout America’s history of drug legislation, and an elucidation of the

similarities between the current and past wars on drugs.

Provine argues that early campaigns to criminalize alcohol and other drugs featured

overt and explicit racism. In fact, she contends that “the demonization of these drugs, my

analysis suggests, could not have occurred without a sustained effort to cultivate white

anxieties about specific racial and ethnic groups” (p. 65). For example, she shows how

racial stereotypes of “the menacing drunken Negro male,” “the drunken Indian,” and “the

working-class immigrant who had no desire to assimilate” were used in the arguments for