Blacks Are Singled Out for Marijuana Arrests, Federal Data Suggests (537 hits)
By IAN URBINA
Published: June 3, 2013
New York Times
WASHINGTON — Black Americans were nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010, even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates, according to new federal data.
This disparity had grown steadily from a decade before, and in some states, including Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, blacks were around eight times as likely to be arrested.
During the same period, public attitudes toward marijuana softened and a number of states decriminalized its use. But about half of all drug arrests in 2011 were on marijuana-related charges, roughly the same portion as in 2010.
Advocates for the legalization of marijuana have criticized the Obama administration for having vocally opposed state legalization efforts and for taking a more aggressive approach than the Bush administration in closing medical marijuana dispensaries and prosecuting their owners in some states, especially Montana and California.
The new data, however, offers a more nuanced picture of marijuana enforcement on the state level. Drawn from police records from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the report is the most comprehensive review of marijuana arrests by race and by county and is part of a report being released this week by the American Civil Liberties Union. Much of the data was also independently reviewed for The New York Times by researchers at Stanford University.
“We found that in virtually every county in the country, police have wasted taxpayer money enforcing marijuana laws in a racially biased manner,” said Ezekiel Edwards, the director of the A.C.L.U.’s Criminal Law Reform Project and the lead author of the report.
During President Obama’s first three years in office, the arrest rate for marijuana possession was about 5 percent higher than the average rate under President George W. Bush. And in 2011, marijuana use grew to about 7 percent, up from 6 percent in 2002 among Americans who said that they had used the drug in the past 30 days. Also, a majority of Americans in a Pew Research Center poll conducted in March supported legalizing marijuana.
Though there has been a shift in state laws and in popular attitudes about the drug, black and white Americans have experienced the change very differently.
“It’s pretty clear that law enforcement practices are not keeping pace with public opinion and state policies,” said Mona Lynch, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
She added that 13 states have in recent years passed or expanded laws decriminalizing marijuana use and that 18 states now allow it for medicinal use.
In the past year, Colorado and Washington State have legalized marijuana, leaving the Justice Department to decide how to respond to those laws because marijuana remains illegal under federal law.
The cost of drug enforcement has grown steadily over the past decade. In 2010, states spent an estimated $3.6 billion enforcing marijuana possession laws, a 30 percent increase from 10 years earlier. The increase came as many states, faced with budget shortfalls, were saving money by using alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders. During the same period, arrests for most other types of crime steadily dropped.
Researchers said the growing racial disparities in marijuana arrests were especially striking because they were so consistent even across counties with large or small minority populations.
The A.C.L.U. report said that one possible reason that the racial disparity in arrests remained despite shifting state policies toward the drug is that police practices are slow to change. Federal programs like the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program continue to provide incentives for racial profiling, the report said, by including arrest numbers in its performance measures when distributing hundreds of millions of dollars to local law enforcement each year.
Phillip Atiba Goff, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that police departments, partly driven by a desire to increase their drug arrest statistics, can concentrate on minority or poorer neighborhoods to meet numerical goals, focusing on low-level offenses that are easier, quicker and cheaper than investigating serious felony crimes.
“Whenever federal funding agencies encourage law enforcement to meet numerical arrest goals instead of public safety goals, it will likely promote stereotype-based policing and we can expect these sorts of racial gaps,” Professor Goff said.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 4, 2013, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Blacks Are Singled Out For Marijuana Arrests, Federal Data Suggests.
Despite according to research statistics that so-called blacks consume about 1/4 of the use of marijuana compare to so-called whites in America. It is a well known fact that so-called whites use more illegal drugs than any other group or nationality in the World.
Article:
Marijuana Arrest Stats Based on Race
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By Dianne Anderson
The buzz around the bud lately is that if it becomes legalized, where will all the black people go?
Cannabis, known as the “the joint,” is often physiologically compared to a single glass of wine, and as popular in America as ever--the place where blacks also bear the brunt of possession arrests three times more than whites.
Jon Gettman, Ph.D., public policy analyst and adjunct professor in criminal justice at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia, reports that blacks indulge in the weed about one-fourth more than whites, but are three times more likely to be arrested for it.
With an overall marijuana incarceration rate that has doubled since 1991, at last national count in 2007 whites were arrested at 195 per 100,000 while blacks are at 598 per 100,000 for possession of marijuana. In general, youths age15 to 24 made up over half of all possession arrests.
“Blacks account for 12% of the population, 14% of annual marijuana users, and 31% of marijuana possession arrests,” the report states. “While these are national survey figures it is unlikely that local variances in the prevalence of marijuana use among blacks and whites account for the tremendous disparities in arrest rates.” In other research, Gettman cites over 21 million pot plants were grown in 2006 statewide, with an estimated $14 billion street value. In California, his recent report finds77% of cases drew a ticket and a $100 fine. In 2006, of the 51,838 charged with marijuana possession, 39,798 were cited, and 10,087 were booked.
Gettman’s study concluded, “The disproportionate arrests of blacks for marijuana offenses in the Unites States is not a local or regional phenomenon; it is a national characteristic of marijuana law enforcement, evident in every state, most counties and most local police agencies in the country.”
In January, the Assembly goes back to Sacramento for their second of three meetings around the new hot-button bill, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act.
Authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, (D- San Francisco), AB 390 wants to decriminalize regulated usage of the seven-pointed leaf. If it passes, it faces the same control laws as alcohol, and is expected to create revenue and save the state money in the long run.
“It is time to take our heads out of the sand and start to regulate this $14 billion industry. By doing so, we can enact smart public policy that will bring much needed revenue into the state and improve public safety by utilizing our limited law enforcement resources more wisely. The move toward regulation is simply common sense,” Ammiano said in a written statement before the hearing.
Ammiano, chair of the Public Safety Committee, presented AB 390 before Assembly members last month.
Working to highlight the extent of racism in the drug war, Human Rights Watch published its report in the Stanford Law and Policy Review, and highlights the extreme disparity of incarceration in its “Race, Drugs, and Law Enforcement in the United States.”
Earlier this year, HRW cited the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration data showing that 82.6 million whites have used illegal drugs in America compared to 12.5 million African Americans. The federal estimation is that 49% of whites and 42.9% of blacks age twelve or older have used illicit drugs in their lifetimes, the report states.
“All other things being equal, if blacks constitute an estimated 13% to 20 % of the total of black and white drug offenders, they, should constitute a roughly similar proportion of the total number of blacks and whites who are arrested, convicted, and sent to prison for drug law violations. But all other things are not equal. The data demonstrate clearly and consistently that blacks have been and remain more likely to be arrested for drug offending behavior relative to their percentage among drug offenders than whites who engage in the same behavior,” the report states.
Whites in America, just by virtue of their numbers, make up about six times more than the black population and majority of drug users. However, black males were jailed six times more than white males as of 2007, and black men are 11.8 times more likely than white men to be incarcerated for drug use or possession. African Americans comprise 54 percent of all those convicted of first time drug offenses, the report states.
The federal government’s 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health also finds that 2.5 million whites sold drugs, compared to 700,000 blacks.
Bruce Mirken, spokesperson for the Marijuana Policy Project in San Francisco, said prohibition is clearly not working. Marijuana is widely accepted, and is used by many responsible adults, but it is not subject to regulation or control.
“Instead of producing tax revenue for roads, and schools and police, it produces profits for criminal gangs,” he said, adding that while the public sentiment is shifting, politicians are skittish on the issue under a strong police lobby.
The historic bill could also open the door for a future proposition to be passed by the people, similar to medical marijuana that first passed as legislation, but was vetoed by the governor before it was enacted at the ballot.
“There is precedence for those two processes having cross pollination,” Mirken said. “All of this stuff furthers this discussion. The more this issue is aired, the more the facts are put out there, the better we do.”
Still controversial, but inching forward, medical marijuana is legal under state law in 13 states, but federal policy hasn’t changed since1937 when the substance became illegal.
In California, murky areas remain, such as legal storefront dispensaries that are now being hashed out in court, he said.
“But at least there’s a sort of tolerance from the Obama Administration that they’re basically going to leave people alone if they’re clearly following their state laws,” he said.
Mirken called the race disparity between black and white arrests “hair raising,” and that there is a larger social cause of these policies.
“When you look at the differentials in unemployment and poverty rates of young black males, you have to wonder how much of that is being exacerbated by the fact that we’re giving so many of them criminal records and making them harder to employ,” he said. “It’s your tax dollars at work.”
