Stereotype Shattered as New Study Finds White Youth Are More Likely Than Blacks to Abuse Hard Drugs
The 12-year study highlights the incongruence between drug use and incarceration rates along racial lines. Photo Credit: Evgeny Atamanenko/Shutterstock By now we can all agree that the real target of Reagan’s enduring war on drugs was never drugs, it was African Americans. However, if rising incarceration rates among black youth or the utter failure to curtail drug use is not enough proof, perhaps a new study from Northwestern University on racial differences among drug users will do the trick. According to the study’s findings recently published in the American Journal of Public Health, abuse and dependence on "hard drugs" (opiates, amphetamine, etc.) are “less common among delinquent African American youth than those who are non-Hispanic white.” The study was conducted over the course of 12 years and interviewed 1,829 youth (1,172 males and 657 females between the ages of 10 to 18) who were detained at Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in Chicago be