marijuana

Breaking News: President Biden pardoned everyone convicted of marijuana possession under federal law and said the U.S. will review how the drug is classified.
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Breaking News: President Biden pardoned everyone convicted of marijuana possession under federal law and said the U.S. will review how the drug is classified.

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Reflections on 4/20: Today is a good day to finally end the war on drugs.
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Reflections on 4/20: Today is a good day to finally end the war on drugs.

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The marijuana industry’s war on the poor
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The marijuana industry’s war on the poor

The way drugs are classified tells you all you need to know about the War on Drugs https://t.co/P06pblLp8p pic.twitter.com/KdCeDcDRma

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) May 21, 2016

Bigger Than Incarceration: Angela Davis Talks Mass Criminalization, Mental Health and the War on Drugs – The Root https://t.co/tqCmXvvKnW

— Brian Chad Starks (@bchadphd) May 14, 2016

The marijuana industry’s war on the poor https://t.co/xLhsA8hkpd | Getty pic.twitter.com/p979Rq4YqC

— POLITICO (@politico) May 23, 2016

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Cops shoot at unarmed driver’s car. Driver Explains Why He Led Police On Chase

Waco, TX – Running from the police seems to a very controversial subject in the media today, with a prevailing attitude that it is somehow wrong or “stupid” to run from the police. However, running from a hostile force that is likely to use violence against you is one of the most basic and instinctual things that a person can do. This is especially true for people with prior records or people who dress differently because they are automatically profiled by police and treated as if they were criminals from the very start of the encounter.

 

Last week, a man in Texas who was traveling with a small amount of marijuana decided that he was not going to pull over to be harassed by police when he saw their lights in his rear-view mirror. He ran instead, just as any sane person would do when they encountered a kidnapper or a thief.

 

His decision resulted in a high-speed chase which exceeded speeds of 100 miles per hour and spanned across five counties.

 

The driver, Jonathan Davis, was eventually stopped by police after roughly an hour when they blew out his tire with spike strips and then shot at his tires with live ammunition.
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Sourced through Scoop.it from: thefreethoughtproject.com

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Why I Support Marijuana Legalization, But Not as a Strategy for Winning Racial Justice

 

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But, while I support legalization as an incremental step in the right direction, I think we are wrong to promote legalization as a means of achieving racial justice. Making that claim minimizes the very real problem of structural racism that has made the war on drugs such a hugely devastating law enforcement strategy for Black people.

The legalization of marijuana, in my opinion, would not lead to less over-policing, racial profiling, or over-incarceration of Black and brown people. What relief legalization would provide, and I do believe there would be some immediate relief, would be mostly temporary.

Why? The New York Times report on reader response to their legalization editorials sums it up nicely,

Times readers favor legalization for the same reasons the Times editorial board does: They think the criminalization of marijuana has ruined lives; that the public health risks have been overstated; and that law enforcement should focus its resources on graver problems.

Those “graver problems” bother me. They bother me because the illegal drug trade is as much an economic issue as it is public health issue. My experience growing up in a drug economy tells me that http://thehistoryhacker.com/2014/03/17/my-your-history-buddy/ folk turn to illegal means of making money when legal jobs aren’t available. And decent paying legal jobs have rarely been harder to find than right now.

As a sociologist friend of mine recently reminded me, http://shinyfastandloud.com/?m=201909 prison is a form of disguised unemployment. That’s part of the reason programs meant to reduce recidivism so often don’t work. Without a job, people are often forced to commit crimes, like selling marijuana. Once convicted of that crime, a criminal record can make you unemployable. Those who’ve been to prison too often end up back in prison, and keeping them there is a way of managing unemployment, even if this effect is, perhaps, mostly incidental.

If we added incarcerated Black people to the unemployment rolls, Black unemployment statistics would be noticeably higher (and it’s already twice that of whites). This would more accurately reflect the status of Black people in the U.S. labor market. Large numbers of poor Black people have been structurally excluded from the legitimate economy, ironically in part because Black people as a class won the right to ordinary worker protections nationwide via the Civil Rights Movement. This made other excluded workers, like undocumented migrants, cheaper, more compliant, and, following the logic of the market, more desirable.”

 

– Click through for more –

 

Source: www.racefiles.com

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D.C. Decriminalizes Marijuana, Maintains Public Consumption As A Criminal Offense

 

“Retired state police captain Leigh Maddox says that decriminalization of  marijuana is a step in the right direction, but that legalization and regulation are needed in order to seriously reduce drug-related violence and allow police to better serve the public.”

 
See on therealnews.com