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Race and the Drug War

By Michael Blankenship

According to a report released Friday by the Marijuana Arrest Research Project for the Drug Policy Alliance and the N.A.A.C.P. and led by Prof. Harry Levine, a sociologist at the City University of New York: ?In the last 20 years, California made 850,000 arrests for possession of small amounts of marijuana, and half-a-million arrests in the last 10 years. The people arrested were disproportionately African-Americans and Latinos, overwhelmingly young people, especially men.? For instance, the report says that the City of Los Angeles ?arrested blacks for marijuana possession at seven times the rate of whites.? This imbalance is not specific to California; it exists across the country. One could justify this on some level if, in fact, young blacks and Hispanics were using marijuana more than young whites, but that isn?t the case...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Justice Gambit on October 25, 2010 (boomark / email).