The Journal Sentinel is reporting on how drug sentences for blacks and Hispanics are typically harsher than for whites.

African-Americans and Hispanics convicted of drug trafficking in Wisconsin are more likely to wind up in prison than white drug dealers, according to a report on race and sentencing by the state Sentencing Commission.

Compared with whites, Hispanics are 2 1/2 times as likely to be imprisoned, while blacks are nearly twice as likely to end up behind bars for dealing drugs, according to the report issued last month.

The article is all the rage around the blogosphere right now, but mostly because it talks about a favorite topic among many... racism and prison.  For me, this article once again brings to the front a basic question about society.  Why are we still fighting the War on Drugs^TM?  I saw the numbers of prison terms being dolled out for even minor drug dealing charges against non-violent offenders and it just amazed me.  The vast majority of these cases were non-violent drug offenders.  Sure, they were selling drugs, but the reality is that most people who buy drugs also sell them to some degree.  And if they aren't actually selling, the amount of drugs on your person which it takes to be classified as a "drug dealer" is so pathetically small, that practically anyone can be considered a drug dealer under current law.

Here we have an significant group of people were are operating in a market that the government created... ironically enough... a black market.  The government created the problem, and now in its overzealous enforcement of these laws, is slowly creating an entire generation of people who at one point in time have been in prison.  And what does that serve?  Who does it help to have non-violent drug offenders in prison?  It certainly doesn't serve the prisoner, who is now further behind the eight ball than they were before.  It doesn't serve the addicts who bought from this person, since they don't think they were harmed by the sale, and will just go to another dealer.

The reason why drugs are supposedly illegal today is because, although neither drug dealers nor buyers are harmed in any classic way by the sale, somehow "society as a whole" is harmed by the selling of drugs.  But is society helped by all these people in prison?