Drug War Racism
Wouldn't it be far more productive if liberals and leftys stopped talking about how opposition to President Barack Obama's health care reform (whatever his plan will actually include, other than $900 billion in costs) is coded racism and about the areas of public policy that clearly have disparate racial impacts?
To wit, the drug war. I don't think the goal of the misguided drug war is to criminalize and incarcerate young minority males, but that's certainly one of its main effects. Here's snippets from an excellent New York magazine article by Mark Jacbson that asks, "How Did New York Become the Pot-Arrest Capital of The Country?"
In this day and age, nearly 30 years after the AMA began flirting with decriminalizing marijuana, you might think New York City marijuana-possession arrests would be in deep decline. You might even figure that Charlie Rangel, the four-decade congressman from Harlem and longtime leader of the Select Committee on Narcotics, had his finger on the pulse when he told a House subcommittee that "I don't remember the last time anyone was arrested in the city of New York for marijuana."
Uh—wrong!
The fact is, New York City is the marijuana-arrest capital of the country and maybe the world. Since 1997, according to statistics complied by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, 430,000 people age 16 and older have been pinched in the city for possession of marijuana, often for quantities as little as a joint, a reign of "broken window" terror-policing that kicked off in the nasty Giuliani years and has only escalated under Bloomberg and Ray Kelly. More than 40,000 were busted last year, and at least another 40,000, or more than the entire population of Elmira, will be busted this year. Somehow, it comes as no shell-shocker that, again according to the state figures, more than 80 percent of those arrested on pot charges are either black or Hispanic….
The kicker in this is the apparently almost unknown fact that possession of 25 grams, or seven-eighths of an ounce—much more than the few joints that are getting people arrested—is not a crime in New York State and has not been since the passage of the Marijuana Reform Act of 1977, or 32 years ago. (Right here add sound of potheads slapping their foreheads, like, how come they didn't know that?) There are exceptions, however. If the pot is "burning or open to public view," then the 25-gram deal is off. It is this provision that has been the basis for the arrest outbreak, many civil libertarians contend.
The scenario of what happens on the street, as told to me by several arrestees, is remarkably similar. It goes like this: You're black, or Spanish, or some white-boy fellow traveler with a cockeyed Bulls cap and falling-down pants. The cops come up to you, usually while you're in a car, and ask you if you're doing anything you shouldn't. You say, "No, officer," and they say, "You don't have anything in your pocket you're not supposed to have, do you, because if you do and I find it, it'll be a lot worse for you." It is at that point, because you are young, nervous, possibly simple, and ignorant of the law, you might comply and take the joint you'd been saving out of your pocket. Then, zam: Suddenly, your protection under the Marijuana Reform Act vanishes because the weed is now in "public view." The handcuffs, the paddy wagon, and the aforementioned court date soon follow.
Reason's Jacob Sullum on pot arrests here.
Hat tip: Veronique de Rugy.