Criminalization and Drug “Wars” or Medicalization and Health “Epidemics”: How Race, Class, and Neoliberal Politics Influence Drug Laws By: Cindy Brooks Dollar Dollar, C.B. (2018). Criminalization and Drug ‘Wars’ or Medicalization and Health ‘Epidemics’: How Race, Class, and Neoliberal Politics Influence Drug Laws. Critical Criminology. doi: 10.1007/s10612-018-9398-7 This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Critical Criminology. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10612-018-9398-7 ***© Springer. Reprinted with permission. No further reproduction is authorized without written permission from Springer. This version of the document is not the version of record. Figures and/or pictures may be missing from this format of the document. *** Abstract: This essay argues that race and class influence drug laws through politicized means. Crack- cocaine and methamphetamine production, sales, and use were met with criminalizing efforts because of their respective association with African Americans and poor Whites, two groups that have been differentially identified as threatening to hegemonic power. Despite some similarities in criminalizing outcomes, specific reactions differed. Crack-cocaine’s publicized connection to violence resulted in extensive surveillance, arrest, and imprisonment. Attention surrounding methamphetamine, however, often linked the drug to safety hazards, including property explosions, physical distortions of users, and the pathology of un(der)employment. As a result, policing the methamphetamine problem increased detentions but not to the same extent as crack- cocaine. I contend that the current opioid “epidemic” has received more medicalized reactions due to opiate’s association to middle- and upper-class Whites—social groups that are traditionally protected. I conclude by proposing that despite nuanced and unique consequences of criminalizing and medicalizing responses, each reflects a neoliberalist agenda that seeks to diffuse social threat and reinforce prevailing inequalities. Keywords: Drug laws | Criminalization | Class | Politics | Race | Inequalities | Crack-cocaine | Methamphetamine | Opioids Article: Introduction Despite the rhetoric of equal justice, the American justice system operates with persistent and pervasive inequalities. Research clearly concludes that persons who are economically disadvantaged are more likely to be scrutinized, arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated as compared to those with greater socio-economic advantage. Much of this research examines the relative reactions to racial-ethnic minorities by criminal control institutions and concludes that minorities, especially African-Americans, receive more punitive treatment than Whites throughout criminal “justice” processes (e.g., Crutchfield et al. 2009; Chiricos and