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The Split Labor Market and the Origins of Antidrug Legislation in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Kathleen Auerhahn
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Abstract

Edna Bonacich's (1972) theoretical formulation of Split labor market dynamics as underlying the content and process of ethnic antagonism is expanded and applied to an historical analysis of the development of antidrug laws in the United States. The campaigns and resultant legislation against opium, cocaine, alcohol, and marijuana are subjected to a split labor market analysis that incorporates the notion of moral panics and an understanding of the ways in which law may be used as a “weapon” in the furtherance of class interests. The article concludes that each of these campaigns came about as the result of an underlying split labor market dynamic and adds to Bonacich's original formulation the response of criminalization of the threatening labor group by the higher-paid labor group.

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Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , Spring 1999 , pp. 411 - 440
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1999 

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