Cannabis Chronicles: Freedom
Cannabis and Social Justice
Freedom from fear and persecution is at the heart of cannabis activism.
By Robert Lundahl
What we think of as “The Cannabis Industry” commands a great deal of attention in its own right. The rapid policy movement toward legalization across North America has changed the landscape. As many are aware, the landscape that existed in cannabis related policy, criminal justice, social equity, and opportunity had been in need of change since the “reefer madness” era of the thirties.
This article focuses attention on today's statistical inequities, in order to educate people on their ability to lobby for that change, and also to highlight the relationship between the agents of change in marijuana policy–non-profits like NORML, High Times Magazine, the ACLU, Sons and Daughters United, The Hood Incubator, and others.
These organizations have provided leadership in remanding for justice and against unnecessary or unwise persecution of individuals or in many cases, entire communities.
It may seem daunting at times to “get the facts” on the new industry now supplanting the internet, as the forefront, game changing, social and economic disruptor of our times.
Courtesy Hood Incubator
A wide range of research and publication now frames cannabis in the context of social justice, and in our own state of California, we can review such publicly available and thought provoking research as “The Colors of Cannabis: Race and Marijuana” by Steven W. Bender, in the UC Davis Law Review.
In his introduction, Bender states, “Both media and law reviews concentrated their analysis on the interplay between the continued federal prohibition of marijuana, whether for medical or recreational use, and the onset of legalization or decriminalization of marijuana at state and local levels.”
Indeed, as many experts point out, it is this gap which accounts for uneven and and some might say, nonsensical laws and applications of those laws, that impact communities inequitably by race. Bender’s review makes the point that it has always been race, above other factors, that guided the institution of anti-marijuana laws…
The publishers, legal support organizations, social advocacy non–profits, and others listed above, including High Times allied Pride Media and LGBTX media including The Advocate and Out magazines, ally as “spiritual cousins” of individual rights and freedoms for subjects of targeting and profiling.
At its core, Bender’s report exposes institutional and governmental biases, in may cases based on incomplete or assumed conclusions.
“Marijuana criminalization, as with cocaine and opiates, stemmed from racialized perceptions of users of color as threatening public safety and welfare. In the case of marijuana, racial prejudice against both African Americans and Mexicans merged to prompt states and local governments to outlaw usage. In states with significant Mexican populations, such as Texas, Mexican prejudice was the catalyst for prohibition.
As contended on the floor of the Texas Senate in the early 1900s, “[a]ll Mexicans are crazy, and this [marijuana] is what makes them crazy.”
In Southern states with large black populations, fears of violent black smokers led to marijuana laws, according to the author.
Bender footnotes a statistic of 872,721 state and local marijuana possession arrests in 2007. More recent statistics are the estimated 700,993 arrests in 2014, with 88% of those for possession. As well noted are, “FBI Reports Annual Marijuana Arrests in U.S. Increased Last Year for the First Time Since 2009.” (Sept. 28, 2015).
The American Civil Liberties Union report, “The War on Marijuana In Black and White” (2013) concluded: “[O]n average, a Black person is 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person, even though Blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates. Such racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests exist in all regions of the country, "in counties large and small, urban and rural, wealthy and poor, and with large and small Black populations. Indeed, in over 96% of counties with more than 30,000 people, in which at least 2% of the residents are Black, Blacks are arrested at higher rates than whites for marijuana possession.”
Marijuana production in the United States was once legal