Most people would never fathom that the NAACP would ever become cannabis advocates.Yet, that’s exactly what’s happening in the state of California — and it’s not support for medicinal purposes either. The California state conference of the NAACP has thrown its “unconditional endorsement” behind a November initiative that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana.
The reason for the endorsement is simple and jolting: According to a just-released study by the Drug Policy Alliance, blacks are far more likely to be arrested for pot possession than whites — even though statistically, blacks use marijuana at lower rates than whites.
“It is time for them to stop using my community to fill the prisons,” says NAACP Sacremento president Alice Huffman said. “Once you get into the system, the next time you get arrested, they bump you up [to more serious charges].”
There were more than 60,000 arrests for marijuana possession in California in 2008, according to the report, compared to 20,000 in 1990. These arrest records come from the U.S. government’s FBI Uniform Crime Report.
Arrests for “youths of color” rose four times faster than that, from 3,100 in 1990 to 16,300 in 2008. The study found that blacks and Latinos make up 44 percent of California’s population, but 56 percent of marijuana possession arrests. This was despite the fact that whites were slightly more likely than blacks to have had used marijuana in the past month; whites were about 50 percent more likely than Latinos to have used the drug in the preceding month.
“For young, low-income African Americans and Latinos — who use marijuana less than young whites, and who already face numerous barriers and hurdles — a criminal record for the “drug crime” of marijuana possession can seriously harm their life chances,” the report said.
Defendants are usually given a summons that “looks like a traffic ticket,” the report noted. They’re not given a public defender, and usually end up paying a fine that can add up to hundreds of dollars. But afterwards, these people have officially pleaded guilty to a drug offense. This, in turn, shows up on criminal databases and can come up years later when, for instance, the person applies for a job. –terry shropshire
