By: Jasmine Smith
As states have opted to legalize/decriminalize marijuana, weed has become far more normalized. We’ve seen far more promotion of it and far more cannabis businesses step to the forefront. But, what’s also been brought to the forefront is a long history of law enforcement targeting minorities and hitting them with sentences that do not fit the crime even though white people statistically use the drug at around the same rate.
Here are the states where weed is legal:
If weed is legal, then something must be done about the War on Drugs and the targeting of the black and brown communities because it is contradictory at the very least to legalize something, but then have people sitting behind bars for the very same thing.
So what exactly is the War on Drugs? It’s a tool that has been used for decades to target and destroy the black and brown communities. Politicians have played a major part in this. Politicians first started out by blaming Mexican immigrants for bringing in the drug through borders. Later they placed the use of the drug solely on inner city blacks saying the drug leads to “murder, rape and insanity”. Richard Nixon and Ronald Regan even went as far as enforcing specific laws that targeted specific groups of people, with the consistent target being people of color. Black people are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites.
In a report released by ALCU the following was said, “Racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests exist across the country, in every state, in counties large and small, urban and rural, wealthy and poor, and with large and small Black populations. Indeed, in every state and in over 95 percent of counties with more than 30,000 people in which at least 1 percent of the residents are Black, Black people are arrested at higher rates than white people for marijuana possession.”
Since the legalization/decriminalization of marijuana, arrests have gone down in states that legalized marijuana. States that only decriminalized marijuana have also seen a decline in arrests but still have a bust rate eight times higher than states that are fully legalized. While this is good, it only affects the present and the future. It doesn’t fix the years of damage the racial disparities have caused black people nor does it give them hope that it won’t happen again.
“In every state that has legalized or decriminalized marijuana possession, Black people are still more likely to be arrested for possession than white people,” ACLU found. Maine and Massachusetts both voted to legalize weed in 2016 and still managed to have higher racial disparities in 2018 than they did in 2010.
“The one common finding across every state and the vast majority of counties is that black people are more likely to be arrested for possessing marijuana than white people, regardless of whether possession is illegal, legal, or decriminalized in their state,” the report continues.
Institutionalized racism is hard to reverse, but some states have tried by expunging low-level cannabis offenses and granting clemency to people still incarcerated. But what else needs to be done?
Here’s a list of some things that will help in the future:
More efforts for communities effected by the War on Drugs
Rectifying decades of educational and employment opportunities lost
Assistance for family members negatively affected by incarceration
Retrain police to address ongoing racial disparities
Effective policies where legalized states create new and lasting ownership opportunities for people of color
Using cannabis tax to return cannabis revenue back to black and brown communities
“The U.S. has waged a failed, devastating, decades-long war on drugs, including marijuana, in specific communities. Rounding up hundreds of thousands of people every year—millions every decade—for marijuana offenses, this racist campaign has caused profound and far-reaching harm on the people arrested, convicted, and/or incarcerated for marijuana offenses,” ACLU says. “Such harm cannot be undone, but as a country we can acknowledge, repair, and rebuild so that our future looks nothing like our prohibitionist past.”
With medical and adult-use legalization gaining large support in 2020 across all “geographic and political spectrums,” it is expected for 2021 to see a similar surge of reform in state legislatures.
In fact, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo vowed that he would legalize recreational cannabis this year, which will result in a raised revenue.
We will legalize adult-use recreational cannabis, joining 15 states that have already done so. This will raise revenue and end the failed prohibition of this product that has left so many communities of color over-policed and over-incarcerated.#SOTS2021 — Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) January 11, 2021
These states have a possibility of legalizing marijuana this year:
“Now that one-third of Americans live in a jurisdiction that has or will soon have legal access to marijuana for adults, all eyes are on lawmakers to take action on reform proposals in the 2021 legislative sessions, and it will be up to advocates at every level of government to keep up the political pressure to propel the enactment of meaningful reform,” says Carly Wolf, state policies director for NORML.
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