Human Rights Watch reported in 2000 that, in seven states…

““Human Rights Watch reported in 2000 that, in seven states, African Americans constitute 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison. In at least fifteen states, blacks are admitted to prison on drug charges at a rate from twenty to fifty-seven times greater than that of white men. In fact, nationwide, the rate of incarceration for African American drug offenders dwarfs the rate of whites. When the War on Drugs gained full steam in the mid-1980s, prison admissions for African Americans skyrocketed, nearly quadrupling in three years, and then increasing steadily until it reached in 2000 a level more than twenty-six times the level in 1983. The number of 2000 drug admissions for Latinos was twenty-two times the number of 1983 admissions. Whites have been admitted to prison for drug offenses at increased rates as well - the number of whites admitted for drug offenses in 2000 was eight times the number admitted in 1983 - but their relative numbers are small compared to blacks' and Latinos'. Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latino. In recent years, rates of black imprisonment for drug offenses have dipped somewhat - declining approximately 25 percent from their zenith in the mid-1990s - but it remains the case that African Americans are incarcerated at grossly disproportionate rates throughout the United States.””

— Michelle Alexander