New Jersey as you may know has the worst ratio of minorities in the prison population of any state in the nation. We do not have laws as tough as those in New York. You can’t attribute it to a political scheme. I don’t think it is a byproduct of who is arrested. I think there is racism at work. A recent committee report looked at a certain jail population of 90 prisoners who were unable to get out of jail even though bail had been set at a low amount and all but a very small percentage consisted of minorities and bail was modest- $100. They couldn’t make $100, so they were stuck in prison. That is certainly a product of racism in many ways.

I am not sure we are getting at the heart of the matter. There are worse places than New Jersey when it comes to minorities and minority concerns and racism.

Q: Why are there so many people in the United States addicted to drugs?

Number one, I think criminalization has a lot to do with that. Thumbing your nose at the police, at the law, has its attraction. A kind of daring if you will. Second of course, is the simple fact that drugs can be attractive, recreational drugs. Smoking some marijuana, evidently, makes you feel good. Availability is a big problem, we have lots of drugs available. And there are all sorts of subtle persuaders around, people out on the street selling drugs. They are capable of giving somebody a few free rides until they become hooked. There is an interesting book- Drug Crazy, by Mike Gray, up in Indiana. What he tells us about the drugs arrangement in Chicago is really fascinating.

As he lays it out, there’s the whole system set up in Chicago where the politicians, judges, lawyers, the drug dealers and so forth all simply recognize a certain way of handling these cases- he gets arrested, he gets assigned a public defender who knows what the judge is likely to do, the prosecutor knows what the judge is likely to do, so it is pretty easy to work out a plea bargain. And then he is either in jail or out back on the street doing the same thing.

Q: Why should everyday Americans care about drug policies?

Because people who are addicted are very unfortunate people, they are sick. I think we have an obligation to everybody in this society to help them if we can. We are spending at least $25 billion a year in state and federal dollars on the drug war. We know a great deal of revenue is produced by drugs which never gets taxed, perhaps $80 billion a year. We have strong organizations in support of medical marijuana. I believe that if we decriminalized everything, it would not be nearly as popular.