Posted on 09/07/2009 7:39:42 PM PDT by Steelfish
The racism of marijuana prohibition
Enforcement of marijuana laws disproportionately affects young African Americans -- even though their usage rates are lower than whites'.
By Stephen Gutwillig September 7, 2009
The Times' Aug. 30 article, "Marijuana’s new high life," does a great job describing the cultural mainstreaming of marijuana. Pot is indeed flourishing in "civilized society" as never before, and the movement to end decades of failed prohibition has picked up unprecedented momentum.
But that debate has largely ignored the people most impacted by our current policies -- the rising number of people, particularly young people of color, arrested on marijuana charges each year.
According to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ), the arrest rate for all offenses in California sank by 40% from 1990 to 2008, with arrests for rape and murder falling by more than 60% each.
Drug possession arrests for everything but marijuana collectively fell by nearly 30% in the same period. Meanwhile, arrests for marijuana possession have skyrocketed -- up 127%. This rise in marijuana arrests is the ultimate outlier.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It was the Democrats who first proposed making recreational drugs illegal in order to be able to arrest more blacks and put them on their prison plantations. Then it was FDR and his Congress who made the current anti-drug laws when the first was struck down as unconstitutional. And it was Rats who came up with RICO.
Rats: looking to imprison a large part of the population since 1865.
It’s not too complicated. Subject the wrong people to the wrong side of the drug laws, and pretty soon you won’t have a Drug War to play around with anymore:
Here’s an oldie but goodie from 2000:
FEDS TURN UP THEIR NOSES AT WHITE-COLLAR COKEHEADS
Hundreds of yuppie cokeheads snared by a sting - including doctors, lawyers and professors - are getting off because prosecutors say they’re “genteel users” who can manage their habits, sources told The Post. “The attitude seems to be, these are not snot-dripping junkies on someone’s doorstep, these people are more acceptable, so [federal prosecutors] are uncomfortable locking them up,” said a source familiar with the decision.
Law-enforcement sources say U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White has chosen not to prosecute any of the white-collar powder purchasers caught in a massive home-delivery cocaine sting nearly a year ago. Sources have estimated the number of buyers between several hundred and 2,000-plus.
More than a half-dozen dealers have been busted, and most have pleaded guilty in the case. But no buyers have been charged.
The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in New York, Lewis Rice, has lobbied hard for buyer arrests. But White has firmly rebuffed him, sources said.
“Rice said, ‘Just give me 100 people, to make a point that this is a real crime with consequences,’” said one fed.
Prosecutors are contemplating sending stern letters to the suspects warning them to keep their noses clean.
“These losers are buying drugs and they get an angry letter and a free ride?” scoffed one official. “It’s unbelievable.”
When White announced the dealers’ arrests a year ago, she said the livery-cab operation made buying cocaine “as easy to order as a pizza.”And some close to the case argue it would be almost as easy to prosecute many of the buyers.
“These people are caught on wiretaps, on videotape, on phone records,” a source said. “Nothing’s happening.”
“We can’t comment on any specific investigation,” said White’s spokesman Marvin Smilon. “However, the focus of federal drug prosecutions is on importers, dealers and distributors. Very rarely is any buyer or user charged federally.”
DEA agents spent a year building the case by observing a bogus livery-cab service run out of a Queens apartment by Jose Fernandez, who pleaded guilty in November.
Investigators found that the ring took phone orders for cocaine that drivers would deliver to customers - many of them at Wall Street banks, white-shoe law firms and swank Manhattan addresses, according to court documents.
Sources say that since the dealers’ arrests, many of the buyers have hired lawyers who have bombarded officials with phone calls, insisting their clients not be charged in the case.
Other law-enforcement officials said they were surprised by White’s decision, especially since the NYPD regularly busts buyers in undercover operations.
“So, basically this means that if you buy loose joints in Washington Square Park, you’re going to get charged, but if you are a regular cocaine customer, you don’t,” one said
Real headline: ‘blacks use more drugs’.. And commit murder, both per capita.
Better legalize em all, to be fair.
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.........Baretta
The racism is exercised by those who chose to ignore sociatal laws simply because they are ‘whitey’ laws. The black resolutionary theology really did a number on Americans that happened to be black.
LAT leftists promote legalized dope by playing the race card.
What a surprise.
This has me wondering if some "genteel users" really can manage their habits, as opposed to being led inexorably down the road to random theft, murder, and so on.
If they can manage their habits, then the drug may not be (as) demonic as portrayed.
Free will trumps addiction? If it does, then there goes the main justification for the "War on Drugs".
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