The Communal Impacts of Drug Criminalization in Maryland

“Black and brown people are being targeted at higher rates for drug possession and
paraphernalia. One thing we have to combat every day in Baltimore, is drugs being planted on
people and people being stopped unjustly and searched. People are even being ticketed and fined
for having cotton or alcohol wipes. The police are taken advantage of there being a grey area.
I’m hoping that all drug paraphernalia will be decriminalized and eventually legalized so that
cops can't target Black and brown people like they're doing.” (Monica)
The Breakdown of Family and Community Bonds
When interviewees were asked how they saw the impact of drug use on their community, the core of their
concerns was the breakdown of community and conditions of violence created by the War on Drugs and
subsequent policies. Their perspective on the impacts of drug use and drug criminalization often
overlapped with the root causes of drug addiction because these factors were intertwined and fed into one
another in a vicious cycle. One interviewee stated:
“So, if we talk about how drug use and drug abuse impacts my community, I would say it
impacts a community sort of multi-generationally and the decomposition of the Black family
unit. It impacts the family, often for the individual that is experiencing the hardship, the
dehumanization process, the further dehumanization process of folks of African descent,
especially. It impacts the family unit and the individual's ability to access quality health care.”
(Donna)
The interviewee made it clear that the racialized agenda of drug policy was to target Black communities
and that it was designed to erode family systems. This was also noted by another interviewee:
The dynamics of community has changed... When I was growing up, my mother was home.
There was always that person in the community or a couple of people in the community that
even did daycare in the community, watch over, overseers of the community, and would watch
children in the community. So, there was that collectiveness. But when you then throw addiction
on top of that, you throw incarceration on top of that, you throw in the laws that came in the
70s where people had a small amount of cocaine, and they got 25 years. So, when you remove
the family systems, when you break down those systems, this is what we are seeing. It’s
impacting everybody.” (Tabatha)
The interviewee described how the responsibilities shared among community members including
childcare were essential to creating a sense of collectiveness and to building up the conditions needed for
people to thrive. The loss of community members to addiction and mass incarceration weakened social
networks as described by the concept of coercive mobility (Clear 2009). Another interviewee put it:
“The main theme is separation and separation occurs on multiple levels. It's the selective
enforcement of criminalizing drugs. There is an impact of racialized and economic trauma so
that it separates society at large, but on the individual level, it separates relatives from each
other. Because if I'm locked up, I'm removed from society. I'm incarcerated. Then I have no
physical contact, so there's no hugging, there's no kissing good night. There's no waking up in
the morning. There's no physical way of transmitting stories, traditions, family
lineage and family knowledge. And so, there's this tremendous impact of separation on the
physical. Also, the separation of relationship. I don’t know my uncle because he was
incarcerated since before I was born. I don’t know my mother because she has been in and out of
halfway homes and recovery houses because its court ordered, or because I’ve been placed in
foster care.” (J)
Physical separation resulting from incarceration leads to a breakdown in family relationships. This has an
especially deep impact on the ability of parents to raise their children.
“The criminalization of drugs may also include the foster care system because children are not
there by choice. It serves to separate. It is a tool of western and White supremacy in all kinds of
communities, not just in Baltimore.” (J)
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