Blissful MLK Day!
Time to catastrophize only a bit. Final yr right now, I kicked off this put up by writing:
If Martin Luther King Jr. have been alive immediately, he would virtually actually advocate to finish the Conflict on Medication. Dr. King by no means spoke publicly about medication or hashish specifically: he was assassinated in 1968, two years earlier than President Nixon signed the Managed Substances Act (CSA). However it’s nicely established that the Conflict on Medication was and is a war on minorities and people of color. It’s the antithesis of equality and justice. And it’s nonetheless going robust.
Issues aren’t wanting significantly better in 2023. Not too long ago launched FBI marijuana and drug crime data, which are confusing, point out that hashish continues to be the drug struggle’s main driver. That is true even when easy possession arrests could be lowering. Conservatively, native legislation enforcement officers clocked over 170,000 arrests for possession of hashish in 2021 (the latest yr of Up to date statistics). Texas is the nation’s leading culprit, adopted by Tennessee and North Carolina.
These arrests aren’t for cartel exercise, or any type of distribution or marijuana “trafficking”. Many, many individuals are trafficking the plant nonetheless. My legislation agency has labored with 1000’s of them over time. We’ve helped them purchase state and native licenses, elevate cash, purchase and lease actual property, pay one another, sue one another, and so forth. They’ve acquired cart blanche; and only a few of them are minorities or folks of colour.
The catastrophizing half is available in if you begin to perceive that the tide gained’t exit anytime quickly. Most of the larger states have made their strikes as to hashish, and Congress and the Biden administration, together with by the President’s current pardons, have badly missed the mark. As I wrote final yr:
I’m terribly, terribly disenchanted in our management on this. Most of our leaders are cowards, beginning on the very high. On the marketing campaign path, Joe Biden pledged to “decriminalize using hashish and routinely expunge all prior hashish use convictions.” That promise sits moldering right here on the “Black America” web page of his web site.
Buddies, I simply checked and it’s nonetheless up. You may learn it– after clicking by a donations request.
In any case, the possibilities of Biden residing as much as his guarantees, or of hashish reform occurring within the new Congress, seem to be slim to none. This implies we must always brace for a half million or so extra arrests over the subsequent few years. Many of those arrests might be of individuals of colour, strolling round with joints and such in locations like Texas and Tennessee and North Carolina.
The cognitive dissonance will proceed to develop. States like New York and New Jersey, as soon as marquee prosecutors of the drug struggle, have rolled out hashish decriminalization and social fairness packages that ought to put the Western states to disgrace. I doubt anybody will crack the social fairness code on hashish commerce anytime quickly, however these overtures stand in stark reduction to what we are going to proceed to see within the backwaters. All of the whereas, authorized gross sales of hashish will proceed to march towards $80 billion in 2030.
I don’t imply to be all doom and gloom. I do imply to recollect, although, that drug coverage reform is a civil rights and social justice problem. Dr. King would have been throughout this one.
The yr is 2023 and it’s time to finish the drug struggle, beginning with hashish.