Proposition 19, California's ballot measure to decriminalize marijuana, is emerging as a wedge issue in the black community. Many African-Americans, particularly in the religious community, oppose the initiative on the grounds that pot use can lead to abuse of more harmful drugs like crack cocaine. Other black activists, however (including California's NAACP), say that African-Americans are disproportionately arrested for marijuana possession, and decriminalization would keep many young black men out of jail. Is decriminalization emerging as a race issue in California? (Watch a local report about the marijuana divide)
So long as our drug laws are racist, it will be nothing else: Of course marijuana is a race issue, says Leonard Pitts Jr. in the Miami Herald. When, in some states, "black men are jailed on drug charges at a rate 50 times higher than whites," it can't be anything else. These "absurd" sentencing rates "constitute nothing less than a new racial caste system." If the disastrous War on Drugs has taught us anything, it's that we must prioritize "treatment over incarceration." California's new law is a step in the right direction.
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