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]]>I think it’s time to talk about an issue that isn’t glamorous or infamous, but it is so subtle and so completely off the radar, for a girl from the St. Louis suburbs, that my comprehension of it is still watery at best. But we cannot keep ignoring mass incarceration or what is often called the school to prison pipeline.
Mass incarceration has become a massive problem in this country in the aftermath of the war on drugs. And this problem disproportionately affects African American males. It has been argued that “mass” incarceration cannot possibly just affect black males, which is true, but because it is centered in a certain demographic area it is does disproportionately affect the urban poor. It is likely for this reason, that mass incarceration and the systematic imprisonment, and thereby the oppression of these individuals, isn’t at the forefront of the public’s mind for long.
Despite public outcry after the Trayvon Martin trial, we are still failing to address the monumental discrimination and criminalization of young blacks. I understand but refuse to accept the complacency, after all. for those of us outside of the neighborhoods in which this taking place and outside the barbed wire race walls, it doesn’t come up in conversation, it doesn’t affect our everyday lives, and many of us see the persecution of a people who are falsely accused of criminal behavior as inevitable. After all, “You can’t be too careful.” We tell ourselves these people had to have just slipped through the cracks, and that the law is simply going above and beyond by taking every necessary precaution. But from the other side of the bars, men and women suffer. They are innocent and will live their entire lives struggling with the burden of a police record.
As progressives, it has to be complacence and ignorance that keep us from action. My own battle was with ignorance, both of African-Americans’ systematic imprisonment itself and a lack of understanding of the urban culture’s intent. I didn’t understand that maybe sagging pants and graffiti were forms of expression, forms of resistance, a self- imposed identity created because the ones given to them are clad in orange jumpsuits. Which leads to that expressive and rebellious identity, to be tainted by the visage of our imposed impression of what ‘criminal’ looks like.
The sad truth is that police brutality in poor neighborhoods isn’t a fantasy nor is it an isolated event. It’s a real problem that happens to real people. Has the war on drugs really accomplished much more than sweeping drug busts that target one-time offenders in the poorest neighborhoods, while college students are getting high in their dorms? If it is socially acceptable for posh stores to sell t-shirts with marijuana leaves on them, then why do young black men have to watch how they act when wearing a hoodie.
A criminal record only continues the already endless and nearly inescapable cycle of poverty and for so many who are influenced so young, don’t they deserve a second chance? Or is it written that they must be reconciled to a society that excludes them from their right to education, property and liberty? People’s human rights are being violated and trampled on. How can we say that isn’t the definition of being disenfranchised? Of being oppressed?
If you want to become further involved in the social movement against mass imprisonment, awareness is the first place to start. I recommend Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow a book that explains this phenomenon with depth and backs her findings with tremendous research and detail.
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]]>The post Breaking marijuana taboos, one state at a time appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The 2012 election heralded many victories for the U.S., chief among them the re-election of President Obama. We’ve heard about the election of the first openly gay woman to the Senate, Tammy Duckworth. We’ve heard about the new, highly diverse Democratic Congress. And we’ve heard of the much anticipated return of Alan Grayson. Some exciting progress is being made with the war on drugs, though, and this is also something to discuss.
On November 6th, voters in Colorado and Washington approved of marijuana for recreational purposes, becoming the first states to officially break the taboo surrounding the plant. There are now 18 states (plus D.C.) that have legalized marijuana in some manner, usually for medicinal purposes:
States with medical marijuana laws on the books have faced some big hurdles. We have legally approved and regulated medical marijuana with varying degrees of success in nearly half the country, but federal drug law still poses a problem for dispensaries operating legally in these states. There have been a number of high profile cases in which federal courts have convicted legally operating marijuana growers and sellers of violating federal drug laws.
Via 1970’s Controlled Substances Act, marijuana is still classified as a “Schedule 1” drug by the federal government. Though it is legal in some states, growers and dispensaries are still susceptible to federal prosecution, especially if they are large scale operations.
Proponents of medicinal and decriminalized marijuana point to assurances from President Obama and AG Eric Holder that the federal government would not make prosecuting legal users of marijuana a priority under his administration. In an April 2012 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, the president clarified:
What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana—and the reason is, because it’s against federal law. I can’t nullify congressional law. I can’t ask the Justice Department to say, ‘Ignore completely a federal law that’s on the books.’ What I can say is, ‘Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage.’ As a consequence, there haven’t been prosecutions of users of marijuana for medical purposes.
That’s a great point made by the president. However, targeting and prosecuting legal growers and dispensaries limits the availability of legal plants for people who consume it—legally—for medicinal purposes. If it is not available by legal means, people will return to obtaining it by illegal means and that means more drug-related prosecutions and convictions, both on the state and federal levels.
There’s another roadblock, as reported here:
Federal law is such that the government doesn’t recognize the medical value of medicinal marijuana, and there is no distinction between medical use and non medical use… Without that distinction, the government can effectively exclude any evidence of medical use even if people being tried are in compliance with local and state laws.
So long as state and federal law are at odds, marijuana use will continue to be an activity that is criminalized. But which policy (legal or illegal) is the more logical one? Historical data offers some answers and perspective.
In 1936, the propaganda film Reefer Madness effectively scared Americans straight with dire warnings of suicide, rape, and murder as a result of marijuana consumption. However, though prohibition started shortly thereafter in 1937 with the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, the War on Drugs officially began in the 1970’s under anti-marijuana president, Richard Nixon. Nixon appointed the Shafer Commission to review and assess the country’s marijuana policy. and according to a book written by two men who worked for Nixon, he promptly and famously tossed it in the trash bin when the results weren’t to his liking.
The Shafer Commission’s report stated that marijuana prohibition and public opinion were based primarily on inadequate understanding of the effects of marijuana, unsubstantiated “lurid accounts of marijuana atrocities”, e.g. propaganda. The report concluded that, “Looking only at the effects on the individual there is little proven danger of physical or psychological harm from the experimental or intermittent use of the natural preparations of cannabis.”
That same Commission suggested a social control policy that would discourage marijuana use without prosecuting users. The report compared this idea of social control to marriage, stating that “We officially encourage matrimony by giving married couples favorable tax treatment; but we do not compel people to get married.”
Despite the Commission’s report, former president Nixon began an aggressive anti-drug policy that resulted in hundreds of thousands of drug convictions. He declared that drug abuse was “public enemy number one”.
Today, about 40% of Americans admit to having consumed marijuana at some point in their lives. That means almost half of us are [admittedly] aware of the actual effects of marijuana and may be responsible for changing public opinion. In 2010, an ABC poll said that 80% of Americans approved of legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes. As more research is completed and more states successfully regulate its use, favorable public opinion of marijuana use increases.
Among mounting concerns of national debt and government expenditures, common sense drug policy should be a priority. In 2010, the federal government spent $15 billion dollars on the war on drugs; state and local governments spent around $25 billion that same year. An end to marijuana prohibition just makes sense and we are making progress, one state at a time.
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