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WORK TITLE: Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Washington, DC.
EDUCATION:George Washington University, B.A.; University of California, Irvine, M.A., Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
University of San Diego, associate professor, 1999-2009; Clayton State University, Morrow, GA, professor, Department of Sociology chair, 2009-15; California State University, San Bernardino, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences dean, 2015–.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
A. Rafik Mohamed did his undergraduate study at George Washington University and earned both a master’s and a doctorate at the University of California, Irvine. He went on to teach at the University of San Diego and then at Clayton State University in Morrow, Georgia, before taking a position as dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at California State University, San Bernardino, which he has held since 2015. Mohamed has published two books: Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class and Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race.
Dorm Room Dealers
Rafik teamed with sociologist Erik D. Fritsvold to write Dorm Room Dealers, a study of a group of upper-middle-class students who took part in a drug-dealing ring at college campuses across Southern California. On a black market network, the students sold marijuana, cocaine, Ecstasy, Ritalin, and Adderall. The social background of these students gave them cover from law enforcement. Even when these white, privileged college students sometimes get caught, they often are not held to account in the same fashion as those of the lower classes are. In their study, Fritsvold and Rafik observe: “When it comes to drug trafficking, there is substantial bias in the justice system based on, among other things, whether the offender is dealing in pharmaceuticals or street drugs. … This disparity is not based on any objective assessment of social harm or threats to public well being. Rather, it is more likely that the types of people who are apt to be abusing and trafficking in pharmaceuticals do not fit the stereotypical drug dealer profile that has come from the war on drugs and are, therefore, regarded quite differently by lawmakers and the criminal justice system.”
At Huffington Post, Algernon Austin pointed out that drug use in this age group, contrary to what we may think, “is slightly lower among blacks.” He noted: “Among 18-to-25 year olds, the 2009 National Survey of Drug Use and Health reports that thirty-nine percent of whites used an illicit drug in the past year. For blacks, the rate was thirty-four percent.” Then, too, “because of the strong demand for drugs, dorm-room dealing is an easy, low-risk and profitable enterprise for white, middle-class youth.”
Online at StoptheDrugWar.org, Phillip S. Smith explained: Mohamed and Fritsvold, “gained entrée into a network of drug sellers and users centered on a private college in San Diego and then spent six years interviewing and observing them as they partied hearty, gobbled and swapped pills, and peddled dope with reckless abandon.” These young people are not the targets in the war on drugs. “They essentially get a free pass—from police, who ignore them; from college administrators, who don’t want to upset their parents; from doctors, who are happy to prescribe them whatever pills they desire … because they are the children of “good people,” i.e. white and wealthy people.” In fact, some police officers were complicit in this story, taking bribes to look the other way. The students engaged in this activity simply because they could get away with it. Moreover, these students had career goals to achieve. They did not consider themselves to be in the same league as inner-city drug dealers. Smith concluded by calling Dorm Room Dealers a “valuable contribution to the ethnography of drug use and drug selling.”
P.J. Venturelli, critiquing the book at Choice, called it an “informative, intriguing ethnography” and recommended it highly to “drug researchers, including practitioners, professionals, and anyone interested in social deviance.” A critic writing in Reference & Research Book News found the study a “fascinating” take on “non-stereotypical drug dealers” as well as “highly readable.” Austin, at Huffington Post, reported: “Dorm Room Dealers shows from a new angle that our illicit drug policy needs comprehensive reform to make it more just and more effective at protecting the public.”
Black Men on the Blacktop
Black Men on the Blacktop looks at the cultural and political backdrop of basketball. Why does it seem to be a game for black men? As the publisher put it, Rafik “tells a story about race in its peculiarly American context, and about how the politics of race—and resistance—are mediated through sports.” In the book Rafik notes that “through their pose, language, and the attitude with which they play, young urban black males are repeatedly telling a counter-story to anyone deemed representative of the power structure and, just as important, to themselves.”
Wes Lukowsky, writing in Booklist, found it a “revealing and well-researched study about an important form of resistance to a white-dominant culture.” According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, Black Men on the Blacktop is “written in a conversational tone … striking a balance between anecdote and scholarship” and “is an excellent study of the politics at play in everyday arenas.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class, Lynne Rienner Publishers (Boulder, CO), 2009.
Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race, Lynne Rienner Publishers (Boulder, CO), 2017.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 1, 2017, Wes Lukowsky, review of Black Men on the Blacktop, p. 38.
Choice, July, 2010, P.J. Venturelli, review of Dorm Room Dealers, p. 2204.
Publishers Weekly, September 11, 2017, review of Black Men on the Blacktop, p. 53.
Reference & Research Book News, February, 2010, review of Dorm Room Dealers.
ONLINE
Huffington Post, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (January 4, 2017), Algernon Austin, review of Dorm Room Dealers.
Inside CSUSB, https://inside.csusb.edu/ (May 31, 2017), author profile.
Lynne Rienner Publishers Website, https://www.rienner.com/ (March 14, 2018), brief book description.
StoptheDrugWar.org, https://stopthedrugwar.org/ (January 8, 2010), Phillip S. Smith, review of Dorm Room Dealers.
A. Rafik Mohamed was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in the D.C. metropolitan area. He earned his bachelor's degree from the George Washington University in D.C. and his master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. From 1999-2009, Mohamed taught at the University of San Diego where he was also the Chairperson of the Department of Sociology and was twice voted outstanding professor of the year. Between 2009-2015, Mohamed served as a Professor of Sociology and Chairperson for the Department of Social Sciences at Clayton State University in Morrow, GA. He currently resides in Southern California where he serves as the Dean of the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences at California State University San Bernardino.
Wed, May 31, 2017
‘Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race’ is next Yotie Talks topic
SHARE:
Rafik Mohamed, dean of Cal State San Bernardino’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, will present the next Yotie Talks, “Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race,” on Thursday, June 1.
The free talk, presented by the University Diversity Committee and the John M. Pfau Library, will take place at noon in the Physical Sciences building, room PS-10.
Yotie Talks is a topical lecture program similar to TED Talks, where dynamic experts from CSUSB’s faculty talk about current and topical issues that impact the region, the state and the nation, and encourages questions and discussions from students, faculty, staff and community residents to promote better understanding.
Mohamed, whose research has focused on domestic drug policy, sports sociology, and issues of racial identity and inequality in the United States, earned his bachelor’s degree in sociology and criminal justice from George Washington University, and his master’s degree in social ecology and Ph.D. in criminology, law and society from UC Irvine.
From 1999-2009, Mohamed served as a professor at the University of San Diego, where he was also the chair of the sociology department, and twice selected as the university’s outstanding professor of the year.
Between 2009 and 2015, he served as the chairperson for the Department of Social Sciences at Clayton State University in Atlanta, Ga., where he was also recognized in 2015 with a University Professorship award.
Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race
Publishers Weekly. 264.37 (Sept. 11, 2017): p53.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race
A. Rafik Mohamed. Lynne Rienner, $26
(189p) ISBN 978-1-62637-678-6
Mohamed (Dorm Room Dealers) combines his own experiences observing and playing pickup basketball with sociological studies, pop culture references, and a history of housing development in 20th-century America to present the complex landscape of cultural and economic politics of one of America's most popular sports. He argues that "through their pose, language, and the attitude with which they play, young urban black males are repeatedly telling a counter-story to anyone deemed representative of the power structure and, just as important, to themselves." For example, he observes what sociologists describe as the "cool pose" among many of the players. Characterized by an aloof confidence, the pose "serves as a sanctuary for black male pride, dignity, and respect" amid the oppression and marginality they experience in society. Mohamed goes on to explore the ways national trends and expectations of the sport create stereotypes while in other ways empower individuals with a collective identity. Written in a conversational tone and striking a balance between anecdote and scholarship, this is an excellent study of the politics at play in everyday arenas. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race." Publishers Weekly, 11 Sept. 2017, p. 53. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A505634927/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d94e75c8. Accessed 17 Feb. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A505634927
Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race
Wes Lukowsky
Booklist. 114.1 (Sept. 1, 2017): p38.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race. By A. Rafik Mohamed. Oct. 2017.175p. Lynne Rienner, $68 (9781626376663); paper, $26 (9781626376786). 796.3230973.
What, if anything, can be learned about the dynamics of race from pickup basketball? Quite a lot, argues Mohamed, dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at California State University, San Bernadino. The author is a "bailer" himself and so was able to get other players to open up to him about what these games mean to them, in particular to their masculinity and sense of themselves as black men. Basketball, Rafik argues persuasively, along with the arts, especially music, offers American Americans a vital opportunity to assert their blackness. He notes in this context that even young professionals who join the games often adopt the "street" verbiage and behavior that they are forced to subdue in their professional lives. At the same time, he explores the racism that is often reflected in the assumption of black athleticism, calling out the way black men working in a white environment are immediately approached to join the company sports team. A revealing and well-researched study about an important form of resistance to a white-dominant culture.--Wes Lukowsky
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lukowsky, Wes. "Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2017, p. 38. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509161531/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0e297889. Accessed 17 Feb. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A509161531
Mohamed, A. Rafik. Dorm room dealers: drugs and the privileges of race and class
P.J. Venturelli
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 47.11 (July 2010): p2204.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
47-6575 HV5824 2009-16415 CIP
Mohamed, A. Rafik. Dorm room dealers: drugs and the privileges of race and class, by A. Rafik Mohamed and Erik D. Fritsvold. L. Rienner, 2010. 199p bibl index afp ISBN 9781588266675, $49.95
Mohamed (Clayton State Univ.) and Fritsvold (Univ. of San Diego) have written an informative, intriguing ethnography using approximately 50 upper-middle-class college students heavily involved in a drug-dealing network at several campuses in Southern California. The authors detail how members in these networks deal drugs openly, making thousands of dollars from selling primarily marijuana and, to a lesser extent, cocaine, Ecstasy, Ritalin, and Adderall as black market drugs. These dealers are undergraduates and are often, but not exclusively, surfer types majoring in business who deal drugs for profit plus personal use. They ate unlikely to be suspected by law enforcement officials because they do not have much of a criminal profile and, as the authors repeatedly demonstrate, are drug dealers clearly under the "radar screen." Strengths in this volume include insightful findings from the ethnographic accounts and good-to-very-good coverage of theoretical explanations. This is a necessary read for anyone searching for clear description and analysis of how affluent Southern California drug distribution networks operate. Summing Up: Highly recommended. *** Drug researchers, including practitioners, professionals, and anyone interested in social deviance, as well as all academic levels/libraries.--P. J. Venturelli, Valparaiso University
Venturelli, P.J.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Venturelli, P.J. "Mohamed, A. Rafik. Dorm room dealers: drugs and the privileges of race and class." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 2010, p. 2204. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A251858255/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f92baf4f. Accessed 17 Feb. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A251858255
Dorm room dealers; drugs and the privileges of race and class
Reference & Research Book News. 25.1 (Feb. 2010):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9781588266675
Dorm room dealers; drugs and the privileges of race and class.
Mohamed, A. Rafik and Erik D. Fritsvold.
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
2010
199 pages
$49.95
Hardcover
HV5824
Mohamed (social sciences, Clayton State U.) and Frotsvold (sociology, U. of San Diego) explore socio-economics, criminology, and business marketing in this study of sheltered and privileged young people turning to a life of crime. They include interviews and profiles of several college drug-dealers with clear sociological analysis. This fascinating look into the world of white, affluent college students who deal drugs is highly readable and entertaining while also offering an academic examination of the phenomenon of non-stereotypical drug dealers.
([c]2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Dorm room dealers; drugs and the privileges of race and class." Reference & Research Book News, Feb. 2010. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A224419870/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0bd8630c. Accessed 17 Feb. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A224419870
Drug War Chronicle Book Review: "Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class," by A. Rafik Mohamed and Erik D. Fritsvold (2010, Lynne Reinner Publishers, 197 pp., $49.95 HB)
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by psmith, January 08, 2010, 12:00am, (Issue #615)
Posted in: Book Review Cocaine Drug Use Ecstasy Marijuana Policing Race
Phillip S. Smith, Writer/Editor
https://stopthedrugwar.org/files/dormroomdrugdealers.jpg Whom do you picture when you read the phrase "drug dealer"? It's probably not the subjects of this book. They're white, upper-middle class and beyond, upwardly mobile college students blithely enmeshed in a web of criminality -- drug use and sales -- that, for them at least, goes unnoticed, and even when noticed, largely unpunished.
And that really irks Mohamed and Fritsvold, a pair of Southern California sociologists who gained entrée into a network of drug sellers and users centered on a private college in San Diego and then spent six years interviewing and observing them as they partied hearty, gobbled and swapped pills, and peddled dope with reckless abandon. It's not, as the authors make clear, that they wish their student subjects were punished with the same heavy hand awaiting a poor black kid slinging crack in on an inner city street corner.
In fact, Mohamed and Fritsvold make equally clear that they view US drug policies as harsh and counterproductive, in no small part because of the race and class biases they so inarguably exhibit. Healthy chunks of "Dorm Room Dealers" are devoted to delineating in detail just how racially skewed and cleaved by class the application of American drug laws are. That's what really irks the authors.
And that partially answers the questions the authors posed at the beginning of the book. Why do privileged college students -- who have everything to lose and little to gain -- choose to sell drugs? Well, because they can do so with almost total impunity. They are not the target of the drug war. They're the wrong color and the wrong class. They essentially get a free pass -- from police, who ignore them; from college administrators, who don't want to upset their parents; from doctors, who are happy to prescribe them whatever pills they desire... because they are the children of "good people," i.e. white and wealthy people.
Mohamed and Fritsvold show repeatedly the reckless abandon with which their subjects went about their business: Dope deals over the phone with uncoded messages, driving around high with pounds of pot in the car, doing drug transactions visible from the street, selling to strangers, smuggling hundreds of pills across the Mexican border. These campus dealers lacked even the basics of drug dealer security measures, yet they flew under the radar of the drug warriors.
Even when the rare encounter with police occurred, these well-connected students skated. In one instance, a dealer got too wasted and attacked someone's car. He persuaded a police officer to take him home in handcuffs to get cash to pay for the damages. The cop ignored the scales, the pot, the evidence of drug dealing, and happily took a hundred dollar bill for his efforts. In another instance, a beach front dealer was the victim of an armed robbery. He had no qualms about calling the police, who once again couldn't see the evidence of dealing staring them in the face and who managed to catch the robbers. The dealer wisely didn't claim the pounds of pot police recovered and didn't face any consequences.
Even when the rare arrest for drug dealing occurred, these folks emerged relatively unscathed. With daddy's money and daddy's lawyers, serious felony charges evaporate. One dealer who could have gone to prison for years ended up with probation for a misdemeanor, which was subsequently wiped from his record. Ah, privilege -- ain't it sweet?
The lack of consequences for breaking drug laws may help explain the students' almost universal lack of interest in drug law reform. These student dope-slingers were not SSDP types. Only one of the two dozen or so dealers watched by Mohamed and Fritsvold expressed any interest in changing the laws. Why should these folks care about reforming the drug laws? They appear to be irrelevant to their lives. Perhaps if these privileged students were subjected to the wrath of the drug war the same way their poorer, darker-skinned counterparts were, they and their powerful parents might begin to feel compelled to address the drug laws. Until then, not so much.
These student dealers were mostly vending pot, with a few offering cocaine and ecstasy as sidelines. There was no mention of heroin or methamphetamines. One finding that surprised the authors was the prevalence of the pill culture. Students were gobbling down Valium, Xanax, Oxycontin, Lorcet, Vicodin, Adderall and Ritalin like crazy, swapping or selling excess pills, lying to doctors to get prescriptions, even smuggling in loads obtained in Tijuana strip joints.
The pill-poppers felt even less like criminals than the illicit drug dealers did. All of the students were able to rationalize their lawbreaking, in part, the authors suggest, because they never really self-identified as dope dealers. After all, dope dealers live in the inner city, are poor, and are a different color. For the subjects of "Dorm Room Dealers," collegiate dope-dealing was incidental, a passing phase on their road to mainstream success as realtors, upper management types, and business owners. They were invested in conventional lives and careers, and, as follow up interviews suggest, as a group they are now doing quite well.
"Dorm Room Dealers" is a valuable contribution to the ethnography of drug use and drug selling and is an interesting read, too. But at $50 for the hardback, you'll probably want to check it out of your campus library or wait for the paperback.
01/04/2011 11:07 am ET Updated May 25, 2011
White Privilege and Illicit Drugs
By Algernon Austin
120
The vast majority of drug users are white. This fact has been true for the entire “war on drugs.” Many whites live in majority white states. Most whites live in segregated communities. How do these millions of whites get their drugs?
Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class by A. Rafik Mohamed and Erik D. Fritsvold is the first piece of research that I’ve seen that has taken a serious look at the white drug trade. Specifically, it examines the white, middle-class, college-student drug trade. It is a fascinating and highly readable investigation.
Before going into Dorm Room Dealers, it is useful to have some context for thinking about illicit drugs among the college-aged population. The rate of illicit drug and substance use is comparable among white and black youth, but generally it is slightly lower among blacks. Among 18-to-25 year olds, the 2009 National Survey of Drug Use and Health reports that 39 percent of whites used an illicit drug in the past year. For blacks, the rate was 34 percent. Some of these youth are experimenting with illicit drugs, and some are fairly regular users. The estimates for regular users are 23 percent for whites and 21 percent for blacks. This age group has the highest rate of illicit drug use.
What this means a bit more concretely is that there are about 5 million white 18-to-25 year olds who are regular illicit drug users compared to about 1 million black users. Given that there are roughly five white drug users for every one black drug user, it is incredible that nearly half of all people in state prison for drugs are black. This is an amazing criminal “justice” accomplishment. It is also a remarkable achievement of our culture that the strereotype of a drug dealer is a young black male, when it is fairly certain that at any given time the number of white dealers outnumbers the number of black dealers.
Dorm Room Dealers provides a view into this large and important but typically missing part of the story of illicit drug use in America. It shows how young, middle-class, white drug dealers manage to avoid prison and the stigma of drug dealing without even trying.
As mentioned above, the college-aged population has the highest rates of illicit drug use nationally. The students that the sociologists Mohamed and Fritsvold study do not challenge this finding. The campus drug dealers, if anything, struggle with the problem of having too many customers. Mohamed and Fritsvold report that among these white, middle-class college students,
The propensity for illicit drug use . . . was readily apparent in the seemingly unyielding demand for marijuana within this network. Throughout the course of the study, there was never a situation in which a drug dealer at any level was suffering from a customer shortage or had to actively seek out customers to support his or her illicit enterprise. Rather, on several occasions, we observed customers who were unable to locate an adequate supply of marijuana and were subsequently mired in the doldrums of “weed wait.” (p. 20)
Because of the strong demand for drugs, dorm-room dealing is an easy, low-risk and profitable enterprise for white, middle-class youth.
Dorm-room dealing is low-risk because white, middle-class youth are “anti-targets” in the “war on drugs.” In other words, they are invisible to law enforcement because they do not fit the popular stereotype of a drug dealer, or their drug dealing is consciously ignored by collegiate authorities. Despite “selling large enough quantities of marijuana and other drugs to warrant serious stretches of incarceration under current drug-sentencing schemes” none of the thirty dealers the authors studied was ever incarcerated “even when people in positions of formal authority were clearly aware or otherwise suspected them of illegal drug trafficking” (p.34). The dorm room dealers operated almost completely in the open and with impunity.
. . . dealers carelessly operated out of their apartments or from on-campus housing. And, with few exceptions, the majority of their illegal business was on full display and in plain view upon walking through their front door. . . . [U]pon arrival to one of our interview and observation sessions with one of the largest dealers in the sample, it was noticed that ounces of marijuana, scales, large sums of cash, customers, and drug paraphernalia were visible from a relatively busy off-campus beach community street. (p. 138)
One of the larger dealers, Brice, was particularly brazen:
[Brice] was momentarily detained at the checkpoint and asked by a Border Patrol officer, “You don’t have any marijuana in there, do you?” Of course, as was usually the case with Brice, he did have pot in the car. However, almost amusingly and consistent with the notion that members of this affluent, primarily white drug network were anti-targets relatively immune from law enforcement scrutiny even when off of their home turf, Brice boldly replied, “I’m not that type of person.” (p. 30)
But Brice was, in fact, precisely the type of person who both uses marijuana heavily and sells large quantities of marijuana.
On numerous occasions since his graduation, police stopped Brice for speeding. During each of these stops, he was in possession of several pounds of marijuana and also, as was more typical than not for him, under the influence of the drug at the time. Nonetheless, and characteristic of the experiences of most of our dealers, during these stops, his vehicle was never searched, he was never asked to consent to a search, and he was never arrested. (p. 31)
Thus, if one is white and middle class, one can be a significant drug user and dealer and be ignored by the “war on drugs.”
While public law enforcement might be ignorant and oblivious to the dorm-room dealers, on-campus authorities are in many cases aware but choose to ignore the dealers’ activities. On-campus authorities have strong incentives to go this route. For a university,
a major drug bust is bad for business in two significant ways. First, in a competitive climate where reputation is everything, drug arrests and publicly acknowledging the existence of an on-campus flourishing drug market clearly would not do much for short-term new student recruitment. Further, if students like LaCoste who come from well-to-do families were treated by university officials like garden variety corner boys, any endowment growth or other capital development plans specific to their families would most certainly be dashed. (p. 57)
Universities run the risk of being hurt financially if they wage a war on the student drug trade. While there is an intense “war on drugs” off-campus, illicit drug use is in practice de-criminalized on campus.
Dorm Room Dealers is filled with insights about the white, middle-class drug trade and the many factors that make white, middle-class youth “anti-targets” in the war on drugs. One discovery completely surprised the authors. They did not realize how widespread the abuse of prescription drugs is. Students recklessly mixed different pills or took them with alcohol and, even after experiencing serious health episodes, did not seem to realize the danger they had put themselves in. One student reports his bad experiences with pharmaceuticals:
with uh Lamictal [a commonly prescribed drug for the treatment of bipolar disorder], if I drink on that I found out that I end up having seizures so I don’t drink anymore on that. I’ve only done it twice and it’s been a terrible, terrible situation. . . . Adderall, I’ve taken way too many of those before. That was bad news. I couldn’t go to sleep for five days, that’s not good for you. (p. 94)
Prescription drug abuse is rising rapidly and it is already killing more people than crack cocaine did at crack’s peak in the early 1990s. But students fail to realize that they are playing with a loaded gun.
Among 18-to-25 year olds, white youth are two-and-a-half times as likely as black youth to abuse prescription drugs. The abuse of drugs like OxyContin kill more people than crack cocaine and yet, as measured by the intensity of our policing and prosecution, our criminal justice system views crack cocaine as the greater harm to society. Mohamed and Fritsvold conclude,
when it comes to drug trafficking, there is substantial bias in the justice system based on, among other things, whether the offender is dealing in pharmaceuticals or street drugs. . . . [T]his disparity is not based on any objective assessment of social harm or threats to public well being. Rather, it is more likely that the types of people who are apt to be abusing and trafficking in pharmaceuticals do not fit the stereotypical drug dealer profile that has come from the war on drugs and are, therefore, regarded quite differently by lawmakers and the criminal justice system. (p. 93)
Dorm Room Dealers shows from a new angle that our illicit drug policy needs comprehensive reform to make it more just and more effective at protecting the public.
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Algernon Austin
author of America Is Not Post-Racial: Xenophobia, Islamophobia, Racism, and the 44th President