Pubdate: Thu, 23 Aug 2012
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2012 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: John Ingold

NAACP ENDORSES POT LEGALIZATION

State Initiative Sits Well With the Group As a Civil Rights
Issue

A Colorado ballot initiative to legalize limited possession of
marijuana for adults is set to pick up an endorsement from a civil
rights organization Thursday.

At a morning press event, the head of the Colorado, Wyoming and
Montana conference of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People is expected to announce the conference's support for
the initiative, Amendment 64. The conference's president, Rosemary
Harris Lytle, said Wednesday the endorsement comes not out of an
interest in marijuana use but instead from a concern over the lopsided
numbers of African-Americans arrested for marijuana offenses.

"In ending the prohibition against adult use of marijuana we might
affect mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on African
Americans and other people of color," Harris Lytle said.

In 2010, African-Americans accounted for roughly 9 percent of all
arrests for marijuana possession in Colorado and 22 percent of arrests
for marijuana sales or cultivation, according to figures advocates
pulled from FBI data. African-Americans made up about 4 percent of the
Colorado population that year.

The local NAACP endorsement follows a similar endorsement by the
California NAACP of a marijuana-legalization measure there in 2010.
And it is in line with the national NAACP's stance against the drug
war.

"The realization is that drug laws have been disproportionately
enforced against communities of color," said Niaz Kasravi, the
national NAACP's criminal justice director.

Adams County District Attorney Don Quick, who opposes the initiative,
agreed that African-Americans are over-represented in the criminal
justice system.

"There's no denying it and that's wrong," Quick said. "But the answer
to that isn't to make marijuana more available in the community."

Quick said a proliferation of marijuana among adults will trickle down
to kids, resulting in lower graduation rates and more discipline problems.

Quick said Colorado Department of Corrections figures show that people
imprisoned for marijuana crimes make up about 1 percent of inmates.

The Weld County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday passed a
resolution opposing the initiative.
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