DRUG LEGALIZATION AND THE MINORITY POOR

Since the end of the nineteenth century a pattern of ghetto containment of vice has occurred. As a consequence, markets for illegal drugs have tended to become concentrated in low-income minority communities. Many minority communities, especially in the large cities, have thus been continuously burdened by high rates of addiction and drug-related crime. Ahistorical theories of the ghetto underclass offer necessary, but not sufficient, explanations for the concentration of drug sales and addiction in impoverished minority communities.