Black people in Colorado are still arrested for weed twice as often as anyone else

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Okay, let’s start with the good news: Far fewer people have been arrested on cannabis allegations in Colorado since the state legalized adult marijuana in 2012. But the bad news is that racism in the drug war still lingers, even in US legal weed states raking in billions of dollars. According to the Denver Post, a recent government report found that blacks are still more than twice as likely to be arrested than whites.

According to the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice’s report, “Impacts of Marijuana Legalization in Colorado,” regulation has benefited whites more than anyone else. (Are you surprised?) White people are arrested at the rate of 76 people per 100,000 for cannabis crimes. People who identify as Hispanic American are arrested at 107 per 100,000 people. And blacks are arrested at 160 per 100,000 people.

The decline in the number of cannabis arrests since 2019 has been greater among whites (-72 percent) than among blacks (-63 percent) and Hispanics (-55 percent).

Studies suggest that white people sell and use more illicit drugs, so you can see why these numbers are particularly worrying.

Gender differences are also noteworthy in the data in the report. Although men are still arrested three times as often as women, their arrest rate fell 70 percent, while that of women fell 56 percent.

In addition to the people who are arrested, the place of arrest by the police has also changed. Arrests on highways / streets / roads decreased 82 percent, while private work arrests increased 113 percent.

Of course, legalization doesn’t magically make the police less racist. This is not news. Persistent racial disparities in arrests have been a topic of discussion since the first state regulation – we see this as evidence in a 2015 report.

If you are unlikely to go to jail, you will have an advantage over others if you can sell weed without fear. According to a 2020 study done for the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses, 74.6 percent of owners of licensed cannabis companies were white and a whopping 68 percent of employees are white as well. Recall that blacks make up 9.5 percent of the population of Denver and those who identify as Hispanic make up 30.5 percent as we look at the figures for the participation of the BIPOC industry. Black people made up about six percent of both cannabis business owners and employees, and Hispanic Americans made up just under 13 percent of owners and 12 percent of employees.

Unfortunately, these disappointing numbers apply to the entire US cannabis industry. Steps are being taken in Colorado to even out racial differences in legal weed. The Department of Excise and Licenses, which sponsored the property and labor inequality exposure study, convened “a panel of 25 elected officials, activists, industry representatives and lobbyists” to propose a number of legislative changes to make the marijuana industry more fair should do.

Numbers such as the recently published highlight the importance of getting these laws passed.