RESEARCH STARTER

Drugs and racial/ethnic relations

The relationship between drugs and racial/ethnic relations in the United States is a complex and controversial topic that has significant social, legal, and cultural implications. Historically, various racial and ethnic groups have been associated with different aspects of the illegal drug trade, which has led to ongoing public debate and potential stereotyping. Specific ethnic gangs and communities have played prominent roles in drug trafficking, with organized crime historically being dominated by White groups such as the Italian and Irish mafias, while Colombian and Mexican cartels have been central to cocaine distribution.

African American neighborhoods have faced intense scrutiny for crack cocaine use, giving rise to violent street gangs like the Bloods and Crips. However, drug use is not confined to any single demographic; it permeates across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines, affecting diverse communities in various ways. The criminal justice system has also come under fire for disproportionately targeting minority communities in the enforcement of drug laws, particularly during the controversial War on Drugs, which has been criticized for its racial disparities. Despite increasing awareness of these disparities, the intricate relationships between drugs, race, and ethnicity continue to pose challenges for policymakers and society at large. Understanding these dynamics is essential for addressing the broader impacts of drug use and enforcement on different communities.

Full Article

SIGNIFICANCE: Historically, much of the drug trafficking and drug use in the United States has been attributed to specific gangs, minorities, and ethnic communities, and the criminal justice system has been accused of disproportionately targeting certain ethnic groups and neighborhoods. The relationship between illegal drugs and ethnic background is expected to remain a topic of public debate.

Discussions of racial and ethnic groups and the illegal drug trade run the risk of degenerating into stereotyping. Other factors, such as class and geography, must be considered when considering patterns of illegal drug production, distribution, and consumption. However, historically, various aspects of the drug trade have been more closely associated with particular racial or ethnic groups. In addition, attempts to control the illegal drug trade have had implications based on race or ethnicity. For example, as the War on Drugs began in the early 1970s, questions arose regarding the effect on minority communities of harsh policing of drug use and possession.

Caucasians and Drugs

Classic organized crime in the United States was a White-dominated activity, divided into three major categories: La Cosa Nostra (commonly known as the Italian Mafia), found in all major metropolitan areas; the Irish mafia, especially the Winter Hill Gang in the Boston/New England area (prior to high-level prosecutions in the 1990s); and the Russian mafia, which was most prominent in New York City and Los Angeles. All dealt chiefly in heroin, although cocaine, marijuana, and other illicit drugs made up an important part of their business. The Italian and Irish gangsters were around for decades, the former being identified with organized crime to the point of stereotyping. The Russian mafia became a more significant factor in the late 1980s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which led to widespread corruption and substantial migration from the Soviet Union's former republics to the United States. Many of these migrants were members of, or drawn to, Russian organized crime.

The Russian traffickers often obtained illegal drugs from the opium-producing nations of the Golden Crescent (Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) and had strong connections in the Muslim areas through which much of the opium and heroin passed on their way to Russia, from where the drugs were transported to Western Europe and North America, usually to New York City. Italian traffickers, who controlled the trade in opiates until the 1970s, also used Golden Crescent sources as well as those in the Golden Triangle (Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand). By the late twentieth century, Nigerian smugglers moved much of the opium from Asia and the Middle East to Europe, where Sicilian and Corsican traffickers shipped the drugs, usually from Marseilles or Amsterdam, to New York City.

In the twenty-first century, White supremacist gangs rose up and became associated with many illicit crimes, including the trafficking of illegal drugs such as fentanyl. One such gang, Peckerwoods, was the target of a sting operation that resulted in 68 members of the gang being indicted.

Latinos and Drugs

Most of the world’s cocaine in the mid and late 1900s was produced in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia, and control of the drug’s shipment to the United States was usually in the hands of either Colombian (Cali or Medellin) or Mexican (Tijuana, Sinaloa, Ciudad Juarez, and Gulf) cartels. The Mexican traffickers, who accounted for approximately three-fourths of all cocaine sold in the United States, became major factors in cocaine distribution when the US government began to close off traditional points of entry for the drug in South Florida and the Caribbean in the late 1980s. The Colombian cartels farmed out distribution to the Mexican traffickers, who moved the drug up the Pacific corridor. The Mexican cartels also funneled opium, obtained from Asian traffickers, from Mexico to the United States, where the illegal drugs were distributed by the Mexican mafia (composed of Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals), other ethnic gangs, and street dealers of all backgrounds. In the twenty-first century, Mexican cartels have been heavily involved in the trafficking of fentanyl.

Asians and Drugs

Asian gangs became major players in the drug trade beginning in the 1970s. Like Russian organized crime, Asian criminal activity grew along with migration generated by politics and poverty and tended to victimize members of the Asian American community. Asian organized crime became heavily involved in drug traffic by the 1980s, challenging Italian predominance. Of the numerous Asian gangs (Chinese secret societies, Vietnamese or Vietnamese-Chinese gangs, the Japanese yakuza), the ethnic Chinese groups controlled most of the drug enterprise, largely because they had connections throughout the world, particularly in Southeast Asia, where Golden Triangle opium was produced and shipped to Bangkok, where it awaited shipment to North America. Opiates were smuggled into the United States either from the south by ethnic Chinese gangs in cooperation with the Mexican mafia or from the north by Vietnamese-Chinese gangs in Vancouver, Canada, who carried contraband across the border into Montana and North Dakota.

African Americans and Drugs

African American participation in drug dealing has tended to involve crack cocaine and street gangs, including the rival Bloods and Crips, which originated in Los Angeles and had established branches in many major urban centers west of Chicago by the mid-1980s. Jamaican gangs (also known as posses) originated along the East Coast and moved west, introducing crack cocaine to Kansas City, St. Louis, Dallas, and Houston by the mid-1980s. All of these gangs have been linked to extremely violent behavior, stemming partly from turf wars. The US Attorney General’s office compared their paroxysms of brutality to the battles between legendary gangsters Frank Nitti and Al Capone. The office found that in contrast to these violent and visible gangs, many drug enterprises in African American communities involved “men and women who operated like successful business people with small or no criminal records.”

Ethnic Groups and Drug Consumption

A December 1994 Los Angeles Times series on crack cocaine focused on the drug’s destructive impact on the city’s minority communities. However, drug problems were hardly limited to low-income, ethnic communities, as was pointed out in a late 1990s anti-drug commercial. The commercial began with the statistic “Forty-six percent of minors using marijuana are found in the inner city,” then asked the question, “Do you know where the other 54 percent reside?” as a White youth in the suburbs skateboards up to a friend, who hands him a joint. In short, drugs cut across all racial, ethnic, income, and neighborhood barriers. One drug treatment executive put it this way: “When it comes to drugs, there is a complete democracy.” Some communities and ethnic groups are more negatively affected than others by drugs, which give rise to gangs, violence, illnesses, family ruptures, and job losses. However, the 1998 arrest, conviction, and lenient sentence given a Newport Beach, California, socialite for cocaine possession, the arrests of such movie stars as Charlie Sheen and Robert Downey Jr., and the gang-related killings of recording artist Tupac Shakur and an undercover teenage drug informant for the Brea, California, police department demonstrate that drug usage and violence cut across racial, ethnic, and class lines.

Ethnic Groups and the Criminal Justice System

The War on Drugs proved to be highly controversial, with many asserting it was discriminatory and ineffective, and others saying it was appropriate and necessary. Those who believe that violations have occurred claim that the War on Drugs gives the government more power than is prudent, resulting in invasions of privacy (such as drug testing), needless confiscations of property, and misuse of the military to enforce drug laws (such as assigning military personnel to border patrol duty). Those who believe that civil rights have not been violated assert that these anti-drug actions are both necessary and proper. In either case, the laws designed to stamp out illegal production, distribution, and consumption of illicit drugs need to be applied fairly, and many people maintain that a disproportionate number of minorities end up in the criminal justice system and, once there, are more likely to be convicted and receive harsher sentences on average than White offenders. Critics noted that under federal law, the possession of 1 gram of crack cocaine (more commonly used by African Americans) involved the same penalties as possession of 100 grams of powder cocaine (the type used primarily by White Americans). They asserted that this, along with the fact that since 1986, more than 97 percent of crack cocaine defendants in federal court are people of color, represented discrimination. However, in 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, eliminating the mandatory five-year sentence for crack possession and changing the 100-to-1 cocaine-to-crack gram ratio to 18 to 1. LLater, in 2018, Donald Trump signed the First Step Act, retroactively applying the Fair Sentencing Act’s reduced sentencing provisions for individuals convicted of specific crimes, aiding more than 2,500 people convicted of crimes involving drugs.


Bibliography

Bagley, Bruce Michael, and Jonathan D. Rosen. Drug Trafficking, Organized Crime, and Violence in the Americas Today. UP of Florida, 2015.

Benjamin, Daniel K., and Roger L. Miller. Undoing Drugs: Beyond Legalization. Basic, 1991.

Bernards, Neal. War on Drugs: Opposing Viewpoints. Greenhaven, 1990.

Musto, David F. The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. Oxford UP, 1987.

Pamplin II, John R., et al. “Persistent Criminalization and Structural Racism in US Drug Policy: The Case of Overdose Good Samaritan Laws.” American Journal of Public Health vol. 113, 2023, pp. S43-48, doi:10.2105/AJPH.2022.307037. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.

Ramsey, Donovan X. When Crack Was King. Penguin Random House, 2023.

Rouhani, Saba, et al. “Racial Discrimination and Substance Use: Results from a 2023 Survey of Racism and Public Health in the United States.” Substance Use & Misuse, vol. 60, no. 14, 2025, pp. 2225–34, doi:10.1080/10826084.2025.2537836. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.

Talifa, Nkechi. "Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs." The Brennan Center, 10 May 2021, www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/race-mass-incarceration-and-disastrous-war-drugs. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.

“Treasury Targets Fentanyl Traffickers and Other Key Contributors to U.S. Opioid Crisis.” US Department of Treasury, 19 Nov. 2024, home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2719. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.

Walker, Samuel. Sense and Nonsense about Crime, Drugs, and Communities. Cengage, 2015.

Full Article

SIGNIFICANCE: Historically, much of the drug trafficking and drug use in the United States has been attributed to specific gangs, minorities, and ethnic communities, and the criminal justice system has been accused of disproportionately targeting certain ethnic groups and neighborhoods. The relationship between illegal drugs and ethnic background is expected to remain a topic of public debate.

Discussions of racial and ethnic groups and the illegal drug trade run the risk of degenerating into stereotyping. Other factors, such as class and geography, must be considered when considering patterns of illegal drug production, distribution, and consumption. However, historically, various aspects of the drug trade have been more closely associated with particular racial or ethnic groups. In addition, attempts to control the illegal drug trade have had implications based on race or ethnicity. For example, as the War on Drugs began in the early 1970s, questions arose regarding the effect on minority communities of harsh policing of drug use and possession.

Caucasians and Drugs

Classic organized crime in the United States was a White-dominated activity, divided into three major categories: La Cosa Nostra (commonly known as the Italian Mafia), found in all major metropolitan areas; the Irish mafia, especially the Winter Hill Gang in the Boston/New England area (prior to high-level prosecutions in the 1990s); and the Russian mafia, which was most prominent in New York City and Los Angeles. All dealt chiefly in heroin, although cocaine, marijuana, and other illicit drugs made up an important part of their business. The Italian and Irish gangsters were around for decades, the former being identified with organized crime to the point of stereotyping. The Russian mafia became a more significant factor in the late 1980s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which led to widespread corruption and substantial migration from the Soviet Union's former republics to the United States. Many of these migrants were members of, or drawn to, Russian organized crime.

The Russian traffickers often obtained illegal drugs from the opium-producing nations of the Golden Crescent (Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) and had strong connections in the Muslim areas through which much of the opium and heroin passed on their way to Russia, from where the drugs were transported to Western Europe and North America, usually to New York City. Italian traffickers, who controlled the trade in opiates until the 1970s, also used Golden Crescent sources as well as those in the Golden Triangle (Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand). By the late twentieth century, Nigerian smugglers moved much of the opium from Asia and the Middle East to Europe, where Sicilian and Corsican traffickers shipped the drugs, usually from Marseilles or Amsterdam, to New York City.

In the twenty-first century, White supremacist gangs rose up and became associated with many illicit crimes, including the trafficking of illegal drugs such as fentanyl. One such gang, Peckerwoods, was the target of a sting operation that resulted in 68 members of the gang being indicted.

Latinos and Drugs

Most of the world’s cocaine in the mid and late 1900s was produced in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia, and control of the drug’s shipment to the United States was usually in the hands of either Colombian (Cali or Medellin) or Mexican (Tijuana, Sinaloa, Ciudad Juarez, and Gulf) cartels. The Mexican traffickers, who accounted for approximately three-fourths of all cocaine sold in the United States, became major factors in cocaine distribution when the US government began to close off traditional points of entry for the drug in South Florida and the Caribbean in the late 1980s. The Colombian cartels farmed out distribution to the Mexican traffickers, who moved the drug up the Pacific corridor. The Mexican cartels also funneled opium, obtained from Asian traffickers, from Mexico to the United States, where the illegal drugs were distributed by the Mexican mafia (composed of Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals), other ethnic gangs, and street dealers of all backgrounds. In the twenty-first century, Mexican cartels have been heavily involved in the trafficking of fentanyl.

Asians and Drugs

Asian gangs became major players in the drug trade beginning in the 1970s. Like Russian organized crime, Asian criminal activity grew along with migration generated by politics and poverty and tended to victimize members of the Asian American community. Asian organized crime became heavily involved in drug traffic by the 1980s, challenging Italian predominance. Of the numerous Asian gangs (Chinese secret societies, Vietnamese or Vietnamese-Chinese gangs, the Japanese yakuza), the ethnic Chinese groups controlled most of the drug enterprise, largely because they had connections throughout the world, particularly in Southeast Asia, where Golden Triangle opium was produced and shipped to Bangkok, where it awaited shipment to North America. Opiates were smuggled into the United States either from the south by ethnic Chinese gangs in cooperation with the Mexican mafia or from the north by Vietnamese-Chinese gangs in Vancouver, Canada, who carried contraband across the border into Montana and North Dakota.

African Americans and Drugs

African American participation in drug dealing has tended to involve crack cocaine and street gangs, including the rival Bloods and Crips, which originated in Los Angeles and had established branches in many major urban centers west of Chicago by the mid-1980s. Jamaican gangs (also known as posses) originated along the East Coast and moved west, introducing crack cocaine to Kansas City, St. Louis, Dallas, and Houston by the mid-1980s. All of these gangs have been linked to extremely violent behavior, stemming partly from turf wars. The US Attorney General’s office compared their paroxysms of brutality to the battles between legendary gangsters Frank Nitti and Al Capone. The office found that in contrast to these violent and visible gangs, many drug enterprises in African American communities involved “men and women who operated like successful business people with small or no criminal records.”

Ethnic Groups and Drug Consumption

A December 1994 Los Angeles Times series on crack cocaine focused on the drug’s destructive impact on the city’s minority communities. However, drug problems were hardly limited to low-income, ethnic communities, as was pointed out in a late 1990s anti-drug commercial. The commercial began with the statistic “Forty-six percent of minors using marijuana are found in the inner city,” then asked the question, “Do you know where the other 54 percent reside?” as a White youth in the suburbs skateboards up to a friend, who hands him a joint. In short, drugs cut across all racial, ethnic, income, and neighborhood barriers. One drug treatment executive put it this way: “When it comes to drugs, there is a complete democracy.” Some communities and ethnic groups are more negatively affected than others by drugs, which give rise to gangs, violence, illnesses, family ruptures, and job losses. However, the 1998 arrest, conviction, and lenient sentence given a Newport Beach, California, socialite for cocaine possession, the arrests of such movie stars as Charlie Sheen and Robert Downey Jr., and the gang-related killings of recording artist Tupac Shakur and an undercover teenage drug informant for the Brea, California, police department demonstrate that drug usage and violence cut across racial, ethnic, and class lines.

Ethnic Groups and the Criminal Justice System

The War on Drugs proved to be highly controversial, with many asserting it was discriminatory and ineffective, and others saying it was appropriate and necessary. Those who believe that violations have occurred claim that the War on Drugs gives the government more power than is prudent, resulting in invasions of privacy (such as drug testing), needless confiscations of property, and misuse of the military to enforce drug laws (such as assigning military personnel to border patrol duty). Those who believe that civil rights have not been violated assert that these anti-drug actions are both necessary and proper. In either case, the laws designed to stamp out illegal production, distribution, and consumption of illicit drugs need to be applied fairly, and many people maintain that a disproportionate number of minorities end up in the criminal justice system and, once there, are more likely to be convicted and receive harsher sentences on average than White offenders. Critics noted that under federal law, the possession of 1 gram of crack cocaine (more commonly used by African Americans) involved the same penalties as possession of 100 grams of powder cocaine (the type used primarily by White Americans). They asserted that this, along with the fact that since 1986, more than 97 percent of crack cocaine defendants in federal court are people of color, represented discrimination. However, in 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, eliminating the mandatory five-year sentence for crack possession and changing the 100-to-1 cocaine-to-crack gram ratio to 18 to 1. LLater, in 2018, Donald Trump signed the First Step Act, retroactively applying the Fair Sentencing Act’s reduced sentencing provisions for individuals convicted of specific crimes, aiding more than 2,500 people convicted of crimes involving drugs.


Bibliography

Bagley, Bruce Michael, and Jonathan D. Rosen. Drug Trafficking, Organized Crime, and Violence in the Americas Today. UP of Florida, 2015.

Benjamin, Daniel K., and Roger L. Miller. Undoing Drugs: Beyond Legalization. Basic, 1991.

Bernards, Neal. War on Drugs: Opposing Viewpoints. Greenhaven, 1990.

Musto, David F. The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. Oxford UP, 1987.

Pamplin II, John R., et al. “Persistent Criminalization and Structural Racism in US Drug Policy: The Case of Overdose Good Samaritan Laws.” American Journal of Public Health vol. 113, 2023, pp. S43-48, doi:10.2105/AJPH.2022.307037. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.

Ramsey, Donovan X. When Crack Was King. Penguin Random House, 2023.

Rouhani, Saba, et al. “Racial Discrimination and Substance Use: Results from a 2023 Survey of Racism and Public Health in the United States.” Substance Use & Misuse, vol. 60, no. 14, 2025, pp. 2225–34, doi:10.1080/10826084.2025.2537836. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.

Talifa, Nkechi. "Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs." The Brennan Center, 10 May 2021, www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/race-mass-incarceration-and-disastrous-war-drugs. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.

“Treasury Targets Fentanyl Traffickers and Other Key Contributors to U.S. Opioid Crisis.” US Department of Treasury, 19 Nov. 2024, home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2719. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.

Walker, Samuel. Sense and Nonsense about Crime, Drugs, and Communities. Cengage, 2015.

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