Making Drug use Dangerous for Black Men: Race, Drugs, Violence, and Criminal Justice

• Published date: 01 January 2025
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/21533687221127446
• Author: Patrick Seffrin,Joseph Teeple
• Date: 01 January 2025
• Subject Matter: Articles

Making Drug use Dangerous for

Black Men: Race, Drugs,

Violence, and Criminal Justice

Patrick Seffrin and Joseph Teeple

Abstract

Differential treatment under the law has historically been the case for African

Americans. The current study theorized that the War on Drugs, which was

waged disproportionately in majority Black communities, had the unintended effect

of making drug use riskier for Black men by limiting the supply of drugs to high-risk

populations who commit far more serious and violent criminal offenses. A subsam-

ple of the Add Health data containing Black and White male survey participants

were compare d with respec t to drug use , violence , and crimin al justic e involve-

ment. Drug use was found to be less prevalent, overall, for Black men but its asso-

ciation with violence was greater for Black men than White men. Differential legal

treatment for violence and drugs was found to be greater for Black men than

White men and had diminishing returns for deterring violence and negative returns

for drugs by predicting greater use. Accounting for differential legal treatment did

not signif‌icantly reduce predicted racial disparities in violence or drug use.

Implications of these f‌indings are discussed.

Keywords

race, drugs, violence, criminal justice

African Americans are arrested and incarcerated for drug-related offenses at rates that

exceed those of White Americans (Gaston, 2019; Kochel et al., 2011; Kutateladze

et al., 2014); yet, the use of drugs within the crime-prone years of adolescence and

early adulthood has been shown in some studies to be more prevalent among White

Marywood University, Scranton, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Patrick Seffrin, Marywood University, 2300 Adams Ave, Liberal Arts Building, Scranton, PA, USA.

Email: seffrin@maryu.marywood.edu

Article

Race and Justice

2025, Vol. 15(1) 22-43

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

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DOI: 10.1177/21533687221127446

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youth than Black youth (Bachman et al., 2011; Harris et al., 2006; Rote & Taylor,

2014). African Americans are also arrested for violent crime and self-report violence

at rates higher than Whites (Rojas-Gaona et al., 2016); however, Black victims of vio-

lence are less likely than White victims to see their attackers arrested (D’Alessio &

Stolzenberg, 2003; Peterson, 2017; Vaughn, 2020; Xie & Lauritsen, 2012). This sug-

gests that African Americans, and African American men especially, are underserved

by the criminal justice system for violence, while at the same time are being overserved

for drug offenses. The War on Drugs, for at least the past f‌ifty years, is one of the polit-

ical forces that helped to achieve this state of affairs by increasing arrests of people

found with illegal drugs in high crime areas that were also predominately Black

(Beckett et al., 2005; Forman, 2017; Geller & Fagan, 2010; Mitchell, 2020).

Popular discussion related to race and the War on Drugs has often focused on how

police have unfairly targeted minorities and the accompanying rise in mass incarcera-

tion (e.g., Alexander, 2020). However, one of the lesser discussed effects of the war is

how it has marginalized illegal drug use within communities, particularly those of

color, so that the supply of illegal drugs accessible to African Americans has been

restricted to high-risk populations who commit far more serious criminal offenses,

including murder (e.g., Jacques & Allen, 2015; Ramchand et al., 2006).

If substance use within the crime-prone years is at least as pervasive if not more

widespread in communities that are predominately White, what are the implications,

especially regarding the role of the criminal justice system and the impact it may

have had on the association of drugs and violence for African Americans? The

current study aims to answer the question of whether Black drug users are at greater

risk of violence than White drug users. The current study will argue that a history

of differential treatment under the law may have suppressed the widespread use of

drugs within African American communities but in doing so, may have made drug

use riskier by limiting the supply to high-risk populations.

The validity of our argument rests on the assumption that self-report data may be

used to make systematic comparisons between populations with regard to drug use

and violence. There are three reasons why we feel that this is a safe assumption.

One, while it is true that a greater proportion of Black suspects test positive for

drugs as compared to their White counterparts in higher risk samples of arrestees,

these arrestees are also older, on average, than participants in youth surveys and

may therefore have greater access to illegal drugs as compared to their more youthful

counterparts. Furthermore, police will use more aggressive tactics in the process of

arresting Black suspects for drug offenses (Gaston, 2019), which has likely contributed

to an overall higher rate of drug arrests for Black people, although the prevalence of

drug use may be greater in majority White communities that do not experience the

same heavy-handed treatment. Also, rates of substance use change over time, so

that by age 35, African American people are found to use some substances at higher

rates than White people (Watt, 2008). So, concerns over discrepancies between off‌icial

records and self-reports must be tempered by the fact that such differences are more

likely than not to arise when comparing results generated from samples that may

vary by average age and overall criminality.

Seffrin and Teeple 23