SEVENTEEN magazine and the November Coalition

Nora Callahan of the November Coalition consulted with Gayle Forman, contributing editor for Seventeen magazine on an article entitled "The drug war's casualties". The article deals with teenagers who are facing long prison drug sentences. It appeares in the May 2001 issue on newsstands until about mid-May.

Below is an excerpt from that article:

Thousands of kids....wittingly or not, find themselves caught up in a war they don't understand. And if there's one thing most of them have in common, it's the color of their skin. According to a study by Human Rights Watch, African Americans make up 63 percent of drug offenders in America. If you think this means blacks do more drugs, you're wrong, says Nora Callahan of the November Coalition, a non-profit drug policy reform organization. "most drug use here is among middle-class whites," she says. "Most people incarcerated are of color." Racism is bult into the laws.