The U.S. House bill that would fully legalize marijuana can’t go into effect quickly enough.
The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act faces several legislative hurdles before it could clear the Senate and reach President Joe Biden’s desk, but who could possibly disagree, at this point, that federal approval and regulation are the right things?
In fact, it’s probably the only thing that the Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter crowds would agree upon.
Black people are in jail while white people get rich
Full federal legalization would clear up a racial disparity that should embarrass all of us. There are scores of people locked up for selling or distributing marijuana, often ethnic minorities from overpoliced communities; meanwhile a flood of entrepreneurs, an overwhelming majority of whom are white, are getting rich from the same activity.
Black people have been four times as likely as their white counterparts over the last 20 years to be arrested for marijuana crimes even though both groups use the drug at a similar rate, according to the Center for American Progress.
The statistic mirrored findings from a broader ACLU report, “A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform,” which also showed that of the 8.2 million marijuana arrests from 2001 to 2010, nearly 90% were for simple possession.
Meantime, a limited study from the Marijuana Business Daily showed that more than 80% of respondents who self-identified as having an ownership stake in a legal pot business were white.
So Black people are in jail or dealing with criminal records over something white people are getting rich from? Got it.
It’s not fair to ask police to enforce these laws
It would be a mistake to go too far too fast with just these statistics, but they’re clues that point us in the direction of where we should further investigate.
Consider the effect of these numbers on police, who don’t make the laws they’re tasked with enforcing.
Rank-and-file officers are the foot soldiers carrying out orders from wealthy lawmakers to conduct sweeps, stops and crackdowns in some communities while ignoring others.
In short, they’re just following orders, which might be a problem unto itself, but that’s a separate philosophical debate. The system is racist, and the officers within that system are victims of that disparity, too.
By changing marijuana laws through the MORE Act, we would change how marijuana laws are enforced, which helps the people who have been unfairly targeted and the police officers who are unfairly required to do the targeting.
What does marijuana do? It’s time to study it
Police supporters and BLM activists share another reason they should support federal marijuana legalization: trauma.
About 15% of police officers display symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Police Services program. The COPS number seems criminally low considering the very nature of police work seems like a prescription for a mental health disorder.
The number would certainly be higher for police who work in urban ghettos, especially considering a 2010 study examining “a population of urban, low-income, predominantly African American men and women” in Atlanta, which showed a lifetime prevalence of PTSD at more than 45% of people clustered into such communities.
So, poverty, gun violence and addiction are bad for the brains of people exposed to those risk factors? Got it.
This raises a fair question of whether marijuana can help with PTSD symptoms.
Under current law, direct medical research involving marijuana is banned. We don’t know whether pot can help or not, outside of anecdotal evidence or limited research into the effects on specific self-reporting populations.
The scientific community could step in if allowed to directly study and conduct experiments with the drug.
This would help with issues that arise from self-medication and experimentation. It would also provide better baselines for enforcement. For example, scientists could create better tests to determine impairment levels for driving or operating heavy equipment.
The MORE Act can’t get to Biden fast enough
Now, back to the original set of numbers that show Black people are overly targeted by law enforcement and vastly underrepresented in ownership in the ever-expanding legal industry.
Amnesty, expungement and early release provisions should have been written into every bit of legal pot legislation going back to 2012 when Colorado and Washington became the first states to allow recreational marijuana use for adults.
This needs to be cleared up, immediately.
There are people in prison or failing criminal-background checks over something that others are getting rich from.
Imagine the heartache and frustration (not to mention the financial loss) that families of incarcerated or arrested people must feel knowing they’re victims of one of the most glaring racial inequities of our time.
Imagine the heartache, frustration and guilt that police officers must feel knowing they’ve enforced unjust laws that put people in these situations.
The U.S. House bill can’t get to Biden’s desk fast enough.
It might be the only thing police supporters and Black Lives Matter activists would agree upon.
Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.
There’s plenty Moore where this came from. Subscribe for videos, columns, opinions and analysis from The Arizona Republic’s award-winning team.
Recent Comments