After marijuana legalization, why are blacks still more arrested for weeds than whites?

If you know anything about the history of the cannabis ban, you know that it is riddled with racism.

From the days of Anslinger making eccentric claims about the effects of cannabis on people of color to the days of Nixon when he militarized the police and used drugs as a proxy in suppressing peaceful protests.

Over time, this resulted in black Americans being arrested about 3.5 times as quickly as white Americans. The same trends persisted among people of Latin ancestry.

To combat this inequality, it is often touted that the decriminalization of drugs, and in this particular case the legalization of cannabis, will help eradicate these racial differences.

The problem is, after nearly a decade of legal cannabis on the books – in Colorado – those racial differences persist, according to a recent report.

This begs the question; “What happens that legalization doesn’t affect this racial trend” and more importantly, “What can be done to fix this situation?”

As the rest of this article continues, we shall seek to discover the root cause of the racial differences and what can be done to take concrete action to reduce the incidence of imbalanced arrest statistics.

Understand that it is not “cannabis” that is causing racial differences

The first assumption we need to address is that “cannabis” is what causes racial differences. That’s just not true.

Cannabis is a tool that the police have used for decades to increase its effectiveness against crime. Of course, if smoking cannabis is a crime, the mere arrest of a user will have a positive impact on the arrest records [for the police].

This allows them to generate money for the community or the state in the form of fines. A 2016 New York article outlines this perfectly;

Alexes Harris is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington and the author of A Pound of Flesh. The book, published in June, analyzes the rise in monetary sanctions in the criminal justice system. Harris argues that jurisdictions have increasingly relied on fines for minor violations – broken taillights, vagrancy, traffic violations – to generate community revenue. For example, a Justice Department investigation found that Ferguson, Missouri, police officers issued arrest warrants for nine thousand people in 2013, almost all of them for violating community law, such as: This has allowed the city to collect $ 2.4 million in fines and fees, the city’s second largest source of income after taxes.

Revenue-generating policies keep poor people trapped in a debt cycle, but Harris argues that these policies can also create dangerous conditions for violent confrontations with law enforcement officers. – SOURCE

These are minor violations, with cannabis as a Schedule I drug – the game changes even more. You can easily increase the prison population, increase doctors’ crime statistics, and of course, generate those community fees.

The reason blacks are targeted is because of the excessive surveillance of black neighborhoods. Simply put, there are more police in these areas specifically looking for these types of violations.

After legalization, the trends will persist due to the higher density of police in black communities

The latest report from the Department of Public Safety in Colorado found that black Coloradans are still being arrested more often, despite cannabis legalization.

According to the report, which is required by law every two years, the total number of marijuana arrests fell by 68% between 2012 and 2019, from 13,225 to 4,290. The number of marijuana arrests fell 72% for whites, 63% for blacks and 55% for Hispanics. – Source

The majority of arrests are for possession.

MP Jennifer Bacon commented on this;

If we’ve done all of these things to offset what we would call a marijuana crime, and we’re still getting arrested twice as often, it means there is still something to be said about our perceived crime ” said Bacon

Bacon seeks to limit arrests and the use of cash deposits on anyone charged with low-level crimes for any of the above reasons.

Of course, there was great opposition from law enforcement agencies.

“Opponents of Senate Bill 273 said, well, the police need discretion, and I think that’s what happens when you give them discretion,” she said, referring to the state marijuana report. “If we think the police will solve their problems on their own, then we’re crazy because if we let them do it, we’ll get these numbers.”

And this is partly a big problem with these racial differences and can even be linked to current President Joe Biden with his 1995 Crime Act, which gave the police far more authority to commit this type of atrocity. I will not go into all the details here, as this point usually creates a lot of debate.

Bacon made a solid statement regarding these arrest statistics as well;

“If you pass a whole bunch of laws that focus on poverty and behavior and then just park a police car there, you’ll find what you’re looking for,” she said. “I always say if you ever put a patrol car in a college dorm like you put it in certain neighborhoods, you’d find as much.”

In other words, it is time to rethink the way we monitor society. What is a crime and what is just a police tool used to exploit vulnerable populations?

In order to curb this racist trend, it is also imperative that the police do not have qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity is a judicially-created doctrine that protects government officials from personal liability under federal law for monetary damages for violations of the constitution – such as the right to freedom from excessive police violence – so long as officials have not violated “clearly established” laws. – SOURCE

Interestingly, Qualified Immunity is a statute originally enacted to fight the Ku Klux Klan. Now it is a mechanism of racism.

As a result, the police have a carte blanche to steal, murder and suppress people without the means to defend themselves.

Addressing the issue of racial differences will require extensive police restructuring, which will require the establishment of a civilian oversight committee that would “police” the police.

There are three branches of government in government that ensure that corruption does not occur – perhaps it is time to put similar systems in place to contain these atrocities.

It is not enough to protest, it is not enough to “discipline” – it is time the police received the same treatment as the rest of society. They should be held responsible for their actions. Communities of color deserve to feel safe and not be chased by the police and most importantly – it is time to end the prosecution of “non-crimes” like arresting people for simple possession.

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