Interestingly, women are significantly more punitive when it comes to drug sentencing than are men. This gap exists despite the fact that women are about as likely as men to consider drug use to be a disease rather than a crime. Those who have experienced drug problems in their family are among the most sympathetic to reducing drug sentencing. There is also a significant partisan divide with respect to drug sentencing. And as with their views on whether drug use is a crime or a disease, respondents from different religious traditions divide on how best to deal with drug possession in the justice system.
Education plays a major role in attitudes toward mandatory sentencing.
There are no significant differences between the races with respect to sentence-related issues. But as with whites, black women are more conservative when it comes to the question of punishment than are black men. The intractability of the drug problem in the public's mind can be seen in declining faith in standard approaches to fighting the drug war. Although the public continues to favor the anti-drug strategies developed in the 1980s, support for all of these approaches has declined. Similarly, there has been a 10-point drop in those who cite the effectiveness of arresting drug dealers in this country.