No. We are using crime statistics because the numbers should be compared against arrests, not against the population. When you correct for this factor the racial bias goes away.
Now, I'm sure there are some issues (I'm thinking especially of the targeting of drug money couriers which appears to have a considerable racial component) but they aren't systemic.
If police focus more on black neighbourhoods then they will arrest more black than they should leading to a higher arrest rate.
Blacks and whites deal in and with drugs at the same rate, blacks are much more likely to be arrested and imprisoned than whites because there is a racial bias baked into the system.
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First of all, actual arrests for drug dealing are a more reliable measure of rates of drug dealing than any of the data you are using to base your claim upon. Almost all claims about equal or greater drug use and dealing among whites compared to blacks is based upon self-report survey data like that from SAMHSA. These surveys only collect data from the population that is
NOT in any kind of institution such as jail, prison, drug treatment center, etc.. In addition, the most serious drug users and dealers are the least likely to even be contacted let alone to agree to participate in any survey, let alone one about drugs and crime. IOW, those surveys mostly include more casual users and "dealers" of the sort that buy a bag of weed once a year and "sell" a bud to their friend. They ignore a huge % of the most serious users and dealers of the sort most likely to be arrested because of the frequency of their criminal activity (usually beyond drug crimes). Even when such surveys include some more full time users and dealers, the results reported completely ignore how they differ in ways that would get them arrested more often from the guy that only sells a couple times to close friends.
Secondly, where and how drugs are being used and dealt has a huge causal impact on likelihood of being arrested. If you use or deal out on the street in areas with high crime reports full of many other people using and dealing out on the streets, you are far more likely to get arrested than if you use or deal in a lower crime area inside your home, and mostly deal to acquaintances.
IOW, when you commit crimes out in the open and/or nearby to other people committing similar or more serious crimes that cops are responding to, you are far more likely to get arrested. All data on other non-drug crimes of the sort that fellow citizens are likely to report (theft, assault, murder, gunfire) show that most other crimes occur disproportionately in the same neighborhoods that black drug users and dealers are engaged in their illegal activity. Thus, without the cops being at all affected by the race of suspects, they would still be far more likely to arrest a black drug user or dealer than a white one simply by properly doing their job of responding to reported crimes and and obvious criminal activity during their patrols.
Third, the type of drug being used or dealt also matters. Heroin and crack tend to have far stronger ties to gang violence, prostitution rings, and other aspects of crime that draw the attention of law enforcement. Not to mention, users of these drugs (and "dealers" are often users) are more identifiable, erratic, and just plain acting stupid in ways that draw attention compared to occasional pot smokers or even cocaine users. Blacks are more likely to use and/or deal heroin or crack, whereas whites are more likely to use other illicit drugs such as nonmedical use of psychotherapeutic drugs and prescription pain killers which are typically not dealt or taken out on the streets by drug rings in the way that heroin and crack are.
Granted, blacks also get arrested for pot use/possession more often despite near equal use. But that relates to the fourth fact undermining your argument, which is that drug use and dealing crimes, especially for pot, are far more likely to be charged against people who are committing or in the vicinity of other criminal activity.
Cops are generally not out seeking people who have a joint on them. But when they are looking into other crimes or patrolling high crime areas they are very likely to encounter people with pot on them, some who are also charged with other crimes and some who either were not doing anything else or who were but no other charges have evidence to stick. IOW, if you have a bag of weed on you and your hanging out in a park in a high density city that has crack dealers and lots of violent crime reports, you are many times more likley to get nabbed for having pot, than if you have that same bag of weed in the quiet burbs where cops are not constantly on patrol because your neighbors are not constantly calling the cops to report the constant crime going on.
In sum, there is no valid data showing that drug dealing is equally prevalent among blacks and whites, and regardless, if the cops were in no way racist and merely doing their job responding to crime reported by citizens and putting greatest attention on the most serious crimes, they would be guaranteed to encounter and be required by our current drug laws to arrest a disproportionate % of black drug dealers and users compared to white dealers and users. IOW, none of the data you are referring to is evidence of racial bias by cops because it is exactly the data we would observe in a world without any racist cops. That doesn't mean there is not some degree of racism layered on top of all these other factors, it just means you need different and more direct evidence of it because racial disparities in arrests are neutral with regard to the hypothesis.
