February is not only the shortest month of the year, it’s also Black History Month. A time for reflection on the accomplishments of black Americans and the struggles they have gone through for equality.
Levester Lyons, president of the NAACP’s Aurora branch. Recently the NAACP has called for a reexamination of the decades long war on drugs, a war that has hit poor and minority communities the hardest.
In a supposed “post-racial” America brought on by the election of an African American to the office of chief executive, it can be easy to forget that sometimes there are differences in how racial minorities are treated.
“It’s very difficult to go into well-to-do neighborhoods and start arresting people who have access to good lawyers and are involved in writing laws,” says Lyons. As a result law enforcement efforts generally center on impoverished areas.
Marijuana arrests are one such area. Though Coloradans can feel a sense of satisfaction for our forward thinking on marijuana, in much of the rest of the country people are still being arrested for possessing this innocuous plant. And the arrests disproportionally affect people of color.
“We’d like to see laws changed as far as lower prosecution and more treatment [for drug users],” says Lyons. For the NAACP and any other organization that fight for minority rights, legalization of marijuana is the only feasible solution.
According to federal data obtained by the ACLU, African Americans are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites, despite census data showing a nearly equivalent rate of use. In some areas like Washington D.C., Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa, arrests rates for blacks were closer to eight times higher than those of whites. Even Colorado is not exempt from this injustice. Prior to legalization, blacks in this state were more than three times as likely as whites to be arrested for marijuana, according to a report compiled by the Drug Policy Alliance. This despite a reported lower rate of use than whites. “It is telling that even in a state like Colorado, with a majority white population and relatively progressive drug policies, that blacks are still three times as likely as whites, and Latinos are twice as likely as whites, to be arrested solely for marijuana possession even though use is higher among whites,” says Laura Pegram, a Policy Associate with the DPA here in Colorado. This data doesn’t come from some by-gone era of legal segregation; these statistics were compiled based on arrests made between 2001 and 2010, two years after the election of the first “black” president. It is an unsettling reality for many in this country, and organizations such as the NAACP have taken note. “The NAACP’s stance is that we’re concerned about it,” says
“If the alternative is locking people up for small amounts of marijuana, [legalization] is a good thing,” says Lyons. But let’s not forget, drug laws were founded in racist ideology. The first drug laws in the United States were passed in San Francisco in 1875. These were antiopium laws that not-too ambiguously targeted Chinese immigrant workers. Fast forward to the 1930s and the “Reefer Madness” era, and it’s not hard to see bigotry at work behind the Marihuana Tax Act, which in one fell swoop made both hemp and marijuana illegal. Author Martin Lee concisely describes the thought process of Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger in his book “Smoke Signals:” To gain public support for his crusade, Anslinger depicted marijuana as a sinister substance that made Mexican and African American men lust after white women. One of the worst things about marijuana, according to the FBN chief, was that it promoted sexual contact across color lines. “Marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes,” Anslinger frothed. Has this underlying prejudice been expunged from the modern war on drugs? Perhaps not. This black history month, feel confident that being part of the movement to legalize marijuana is not just about personal freedom; it is also a battle against racial disparity. So toke up for justice.
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