University of Washington decided to take the defenses of the drug war seriously by subjecting the arguments to empirical testing in a major study of drug-law enforcement in a racially mixed city—Seattle.86 The study found that, contrary to the prevailing “common sense,” the high arrest rates of African Americans in drug-law enforcement could not be explained by rates of offending; nor could they be explained by other standard excuses, such as the ease and efficiency of policing open-air drug markets, citizen complaints, crime rates, or drug-related violence. The study also debunked the
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