For now more than six decades, the global War on Drugs has failed to curb drug markets or to protect the health of communities.¹ But it has been remarkably successful as a tool to expand and normalize the punitive power of the state.

From the start, the global drug control system was rooted in deeply racist assumptions about which substances should be banned, and which not. Since then, drug policies have continued to be designed and implemented along racial lines, at the international and local levels. As studies from various countries reveal, disparities exist at every stage of the criminal legal system – in stop-and-searches, arrests, sentencing, and incarceration rates.²

Germany has been no exception to the racist enforcement of drug laws. Here, too, people from racialized and migrantized communities are disproportionately policed and punished for drug-related offenses. In addition to factors like racist policing, courts play a central role in sustaining the punitive and racialized logic of the global War on Drugs. As our observations of more than 300 cases – many of them drug-related – in Berlin criminal courts show, courts treat drug-related offenses as matters of moral failure and criminality rather than public health or social inequality. In doing so, they reinforce patterns of racist policing and disproportionately harsh punishment against racialized and migrantized communities, while largely ignoring the structural conditions – such as poverty, exclusion from the formal economy, and unequal access to care – that shape people’s involvement with drugs.

Court observations reveal how judges draw on flawed and stigmatizing ideas about drug use to derive negative “social prognosis” assessments and justify harsh sentences, even in low-level cases. At the same time, recent legal reforms like the partial legalization of cannabis are applied unevenly, benefiting more privileged groups while leaving repressive practices intact for others. In this way, courts do not merely apply drug laws but actively reproduce a system that criminalizes, pathologizes, and marginalizes people – particularly those affected by racism and intersecting social forces – under the guise of legality and “help.”

Read our full analysis of how courts reinforce inequality by how they handle drug-related cases here and read our latest case reports in our archive.