The commentator shares his observations after attending a Narcotics Anonymous convention, and the conclusions he made based on the numbers of people of color attending and their stories of addiction. Milloy is a metro columnist for The Washington Post.
ED GORDON, host: Earlier on our program, we talked with the nation's drug czar, John      Walters, about America's war on drugs.  After spending time with some      recovering addicts, commentator Courtland Milloy believes the      government's drug policy may be unfairly targeting African-Americans.</s>COURTLAND MILLOY: I was at a convention at a hotel in downtown Washington, DC, not long ago      when one of the organizers took to the podium and made a rather      astounding announcement.  The told the audience that they represent 3,617      years of recovery from drug addiction.  Now obviously this was no      ordinary convention. It was a gathering of a group called Narcotics      Anonymous, a 12-step program to get off of drugs, and it brought together      hundreds of people whose clean time ranged from 24 hours to 50 years      without alcohol or drugs.</s>COURTLAND MILLOY: There were no signs at the Renaissance Hotel advertising the convention,      unless it was the name Renaissance itself, for these members of Narcotics      Anonymous truly had risen from the depths of despair and      self-destruction. There was nothing, however, that made them stand out      from other hotel guests except perhaps all of the hugging that occurred.      It's what you'd expect to see if survivors of, say, the Titanic held a      reunion to commemorate a near-death experience.</s>COURTLAND MILLOY: Now race is generally irrelevant when it comes to drug addiction.  Drugs      don't care what color you are.  I've seen crack cocaine turn white people      dirt brown and black people ashy white.  Still, it's worth noting that      most of the recovering addicts at the NA convention in Washington, DC,      were black and many of them represented a double success.  They had also      survived the government's war on drugs, which is less about drug      treatment than punishing people by handing them long prison sentences.      Even though black people make only 12 percent of the US population and      are less likely to use drugs than whites, according to the Bureau of      Justice Statistics, the majority of drug offenders held in state prisons      are black.  So the convention was, above all, a celebration of a release      from all kinds of bondage:  physical, mental and spiritual.</s>COURTLAND MILLOY: One woman told the convention how overwhelmed she'd been by a federal      narcotics indictment.  You know how those read:  The United States of      America vs. So-and-so.  But she added not even the whole United States      could make her stop using drugs.  Once in Narcotics Anonymous, however,      she learned how to break the drug habit, to go through the pain of living      and not try to medicate it, to learn how to cope instead of cop.  She was      eventually admitted into a nursing school, went from the DEA list to the      dean's list.  You can add her sobriety to those 3,617 years of clean time      that was mentioned at the opening of the convention.  That's what you      call winning the war on drugs one day at a time.</s>ED GORDON, host: Courtland Milloy is a columnist for The Washington Post.