Pubdate: Sat, 29 Jun 2013
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2013 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Derrick Z. Jackson
Referenced: The War on Marijuana in Black and White: Report
http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/aclu-thewaronmarijuana-rel2.pdf

US IS A SEGREGATED JOINT ON MARIJUANA

What a strange and segregated drug trip America is on. On one level, 
the national mood toward marijuana has softened, with legalization in 
Washington and Colorado and the approval of medical marijuana in 
states including Massachusetts. Television shows regularly feature 
the recreational use of marijuana. The Globe recently listed more 
than a dozen shows where characters chill out or even work in a 
cannabis haze. In one scene in "Mad Men," a character walks into the 
office, sniffs pot, and declares, "I smell creativity."

I smell a cultural rat.

The vast majority of actors and actresses in these shows are white. 
The shows include "The Office," "Parenthood," "Workaholics," "Hot in 
Cleveland," "Shameless," and "Californication." For millions of white 
television viewers, marijuana has wafted into another form of entertainment.

But for hundreds of thousands of African-Americans, possession 
remains a passport to prison.

In an unprecedented state-by-state report on marijuana possession 
arrest rates, the American Civil Liberties Union this month found 
that between 2001 and 2010, African-Americans were nearly four times 
more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white 
Americans. That is despite the fact that marijuana use is similar 
across racial lines and actually higher among whites in the 18-to-25 
age group, which has higher rates of arrest. A third of white 
Americans in that group say they smoke marijuana, compared with about 
a quarter of African-Americans.

It is black users who are smoked by the criminal justice system.

But it is black users who are smoked by the criminal justice system. 
Since 1995, the number of annual arrests for marijuana possession has 
soared from about 525,000 to about 800,000. Meanwhile, white arrest 
rates have remained virtually unchanged. The disparate crackdowns 
occur in states with both large and small African-American 
populations. Vermont has a black marijuana possession arrest rate 4.4 
times that of white users, the same as Alabama.

And it does not matter if a state has a conservative or liberal 
reputation. In supposedly progressive Massachusetts, where marijuana 
arrest rates are among the lowest in the nation, African-American 
users are still four times more likely to be arrested than white 
users statewide. In Barnstable and Plymouth Counties, 
African-Americans were more than 10 times more likely to be arrested. 
The result is a commonwealth where African-Americans make up 26 
percent of marijuana possession arrests despite being just 8 percent 
of the population.

The ACLU report blames the surge in marijuana arrests on a 
combination of zero-tolerance policing and the increased reliance by 
police departments on computerized crime data technology that creates 
"incentives for police departments to generate high numbers of drug 
arrests, including high numbers of marijuana arrests, to meet or 
exceed internal and external performance measures."

It seems that nothing was learned in the quarter century in which 
possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine, stereotypically associated 
with African Americans, triggered mandatory five-year prison 
sentences, but it took possession of 500 grams of powdered cocaine, 
associated with white users, to trigger the same sentence. The vast 
imprisoning of African-Americans finally offended Congress into 
reducing crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparities in 2010.

Three years later, we are in an equally offensive war, one in which 
the ACLU says police cast "a wide net" over black marijuana users as 
"middle- and upper-class white communities use marijuana without 
legal consequence or even fear of entanglement in the criminal 
justice system." The ACLU recommends the legalization of marijuana to 
"allow law enforcement to focus on serious crime."

But it is much more complicated than that. Legalization does not 
address why one set of Americans has the privilege to laugh off drug 
use and hide it behind hedges and picket fences while another set is 
plucked off street corners to be fingerprinted, booked, and have 
their employment and education opportunities tainted or ruined.

It is a national question worth visiting by entities ranging from the 
Congressional Sentencing Commission and the Justice Department to the 
cultural myth makers in Hollywood. In one scene in "Mad Men," a woman 
pulls out joints from her bikini. That is considered sexy entertainment.

Not so for a black woman pulling a joint out of her bra in the wrong 
place. On that score, America remains a segregated joint.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom