Pubdate: Thu, 06 Jun 2013
Source: StarPhoenix, The (CN SN)
Copyright: 2013 The StarPhoenix
Contact: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/400
Author: William Marsden
Referenced: The War on Marijuana in Black and White: Report
http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/aclu-thewaronmarijuana-rel2.pdf

THE BLACK AND WHITE STORY OF AMERICA'S WAR ON DRUGS

De Marcus Sanders lives in the small city of Waterloo, smack in the 
middle of Iowa farm country. Several years ago, he was driving his 
car through town playing his music a little too loud, so a police 
officer pulled him over.

"My music was up," he later told a researcher with the American Civil 
Liberties Union. "So I didn't argue with him."

The officer said he smelled marijuana and searched Sanders' car. When 
he found one marijuana seed on the floor, he arrested him. Sanders 
pleaded guilty to possession and got 30 days in jail.

But that was only the beginning of his punishment. He lost his job as 
a janitor and also lost the credits he was taking in college. He 
ended up owing the state $2,346 in fines, court and prison costs. He 
also lost his driver's licence. Waterloo is not pedestrian friendly. 
Without a licence, he said, he couldn't find work because he had no 
transportation.

Sanders is black and his story is repeated with shocking frequency in 
communities of every size and shape throughout the United States.

The issue is vividly illustrated in a study released this week by the 
ACLU of marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010.

The study shows that literally in every state and community in the 
U.S. there is a huge racial disparity in marijuana arrests despite 
the fact that the rate of marijuana use is about identical between 
whites and blacks.

On average, 3.73 times more blacks are arrested than whites. In some 
states, this rate rises to five.

"Just as with the larger drug war, the War on Marijuana has, quite 
simply, served as a vehicle for police to target communities of 
color," the report states.

Ezekiel Edwards, director of the ACLU's criminal law-reform project 
and lead author of the study, said he was stunned by its findings.

"I think that what I was really struck by was that the disparity 
existed everywhere," he said in an interview. "We looked at hundreds 
and hundreds of counties in this country and in virtually every one, 
blacks were more likely to be arrested. In some places it was five, 
10,15, 20 times more likely. In some places, it's breathtaking."

The study shows that blacks are targeted no matter where they live, 
where they go, wealthy or poor, within small or large black communities.

Why are there such racial disparities and why are they getting worse?

"I think one of the things is that police are still fighting this war 
on drugs," Edwards said. "They get money from the federal government 
to do a lot of heavy-handed drug enforcement. They measure their 
productivity by the number of arrests they make. And so they go to 
the places ... where they can easily find marijuana by stopping and 
frisking people with little political risk. Maybe cops are falling 
into this thing where whites are allowed to do this (smoke dope) but 
blacks aren't. It's hard to know."

In other words, frisk a white guy coming out of a bar and watch his 
community go nuts and your career die. Stop a black guy and chances 
are nobody cares.

While the racial aspects of marijuana arrests are the most disturbing 
finding in this report, it is also significant that U.S. police are 
still spending massive amounts of time and resources chasing after 
simple pot possession. The study shows the number of marijuana 
arrests continues to rise, as does the racial disparity.

In Canada in 2010, there were 58,000 arrests for marijuana 
possession, an increase of 14 per cent over the previous year. Pot 
activists blamed the Harper government's tough-on-crime policies for 
the sudden increase. But hardly anybody gets jail time. It's just a 
fine or a caution.

That same year the U.S. arrested 784,021 people for marijuana 
possession, of whom 20,000 were jailed solely for that reason. 
Sanders was one of them.

Pot arrests have climbed steadily since 2002 to the point where they 
now account for almost half of all drug arrests in the U.S.

The dollar costs are enormous - about $3.6 billion annually to state 
treasuries. A CATO study claimed the U.S. would pocket $8.7 billion 
annually in tax revenue if marijuana were legalized.

The human costs are much greater. Jail time. Family separation. A 
criminal record. Loss of job and job prospects.

"If you get a marijuana conviction you can lose eligibility for 
housing, student financial aid, lose your job and jeopardize future 
employment," Edwards said.

Is America winning the war on drugs? Not even close. Pot use and 
availability has increased. Between 2002 and 2011, the number of pot 
users increased about 30 per cent, from 6.2 per cent of the total 
population to seven per cent. The majority of Americans favour 
legalization of marijuana. Colorado and Washington have legalized it. 
But powerful forces work against them. America's prison system is 
corporate. Private prison companies campaign in Washington for tough sentences.

With five per cent of the global population, the U.S. has 25 per cent 
of its prisoners, or 2.2 million people in jail.

That's more than China.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom