Drug panics have often been tied to racist stereotypes. This concept is best described as:

• A. Racial Disparities in Drug Enforcement
• B. Moral Panic
• C. Drug Moral Panics and Race
• D. Criminalization

Answer: (C)

The main idea here is how public fear about drugs can be manufactured and amplified through moral panic, especially when racial stereotypes are woven into the rhetoric. When the panic centers on race, you get a specific phenomenon where drug threats are framed in racialized terms, shaping policies and public attitudes accordingly. The best description, then, is the phrase that directly links this panic process with racialized framing: Drug Moral Panics and Race. It captures both the mechanism of alarm and the racial context that often drives it.

Racial disparities in drug enforcement describe unequal treatment in policing, but that misses the broader social process of moral panic that creates and sustains policy reactions. Moral panic alone would describe the fear-driven aspect, but without naming the racial dimension, it doesn’t fully account for how stereotypes about race fuel the panic. Criminalization focuses on making behavior illegal, not on how public fear and racial narratives produce policy responses.