Why Are So Many Black Men Still in Jail for Possession of Small Amounts of Marijuana When Marijuana is Legal in Many States?
by John Lawrence, July 25, 2019
The mass criminalization of people of color, particularly young African Americans, is as profound a system of racial control as the Jim Crow laws were in this country until the mid-1960s. And despite decriminalization of drug laws and outright legalization of marijuana in many states, people of color still languish in jail. The aggressive enforcement of marijuana possession laws needlessly ensnares hundreds of thousands of people into the criminal justice system and wastes billions of taxpayers’ dollars. What’s more, it is carried out with staggering racial bias. Despite being a priority for police departments nationwide, the War on Marijuana has failed to reduce marijuana use and availability and diverted resources that could be better invested in our communities.
Fifteen states have decriminalized marijuana but not legalized it. In these states, possession of small amounts of pot no longer carries jail or prison time but can continue to carry a fine, and possession of larger amounts, repeat offenses, and sales or trafficking can still result in harsher sentences. In states where marijuana for recreational use has been legalized, criminals buy marijuana there and cross state lines to sell it on the black market in states where it's still illegal for 4 or 5 times the price they paid. Marijuana crossing the southern border has gone down since criminal enterprises prefer to grow or purchase it here and distribute it to the black market even in states where it is legal. Even in states where marijuana is legal, there is still a black market because there are not enough legal dispensaries to supply the public due to the fact that the process of acquiring a license is so slow.
Between 1980 and 1989, the arrest rate for drug possession and use nearly doubled. And although surveys show that whites use drugs as much or more than blacks in the US, black people were arrested for drug-related offenses at five times the rate of whites in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That's because police have concentrated on law enforcement in black communities to a greater extent than in white communities. Marijuana possession is still illegal at the Federal level. Kamala Harris has a plan to fix that. Vox reported:
Harris’s plan, one that she’s rolling out alongside House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY), would decriminalize the possession of marijuana at the federal level, an effort backed by many of her fellow 2020 Democrats. Harris’s proposal goes one step further, however, imposing a 5 percent federal tax on the sale of marijuana that would be used, in part, to fund grant programs that help individuals who have been disproportionately penalized for marijuana possession in the past.
Black men, even if they're let out of jail have a hard time finding a job or renting an apartment unless their record is expunged from the marijuana offense. In some state this is a lengthy process. There is a move afoot to make expungement automatic since so many fail to fo it and suffer the consequences. When people are arrested for possessing even tiny amounts of marijuana, it can have dire collateral consequences that affect their eligibility for public housing and student financial aid, employment opportunities, child custody determinations, and immigration status.
Due to provisions of the law some black men are still in jail even after pot has been legalized. According to the Intercept:
In the 25 years he has served, Thompson has watched the rise of a bipartisan criminal justice reform movement and knows that his case illustrates its limits. The movement has focused on “nonviolent” criminals — preferably first-time offenders, preferably drug users — in its effort to roll back mass incarceration. But penal codes across the United States have become adept at stacking charges on defendants that legally qualify as violent — even if they didn’t commit a violent act — undermining that push. The problem is particularly pernicious as it relates to gun ownership, which is not just legal in the U.S., but fetishized as the pinnacle of patriotism. But when it comes to drug crimes, if a gun is anywhere in the picture — or even anywhere off-screen — the crime instantly becomes violent, and in Thompson’s case, as in so many others, the criminal unworthy of clemency. With a nation awash in weapons, the result is predictable.
Justice for black men in the War on Drugs means letting them out of jail, automatically expunging their records and giving them first dibs on starting a legal marijuana business. Those disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs—largely, black and Latino communities—should be first in line to benefit from the Green Boom, whether as business owners or beneficiaries of programs funded by earnings from the business.
