Use of illicit drugs is about the same among black and white Americans, but a pair of new studies shows that blacks are still more likely to be arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses despite widespread awareness of the disparity, the New York Times reported May 6.

Reports from the Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch blamed the overrepresentation of black drug convicts on the fact that police still focus law-enforcement efforts on inner-city drug use even though the original impetus -- the violence and crime associated with crack cocaine -- has generally faded since the 1980s.

Black men are still 12 times as likely as white men to be imprisoned on drug charges, according to Human Rights Watch. Blacks comprise 12.8 percent of the U.S. population but comprise 33 percent of drug arrestees and 53.5 percent of individuals entering prison because of drug convictions.

"The way the war on drugs has been pursued is one of the biggest reasons for the growing racial disparities in criminal justice overall," said Ryan S. King of the Sentencing Project, who called for more drug treatment and less focus on incarcerating drug offenders.

"The race question is so entangled in the way the drug war was conceived," said Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch. "If the drug issue is still seen as primarily a problem of the black inner city, then we'll continue to see this enormously disparate impact."

Some experts, however, say that blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to be involved in drug sales and distribution. "The disparities reflect policing decisions to use drug laws to try and reduce violence and to respond to the demand by law-abiding residents in poor neighborhoods to clean up the drug trade," said Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York.