The New York City Police Department wants us to believe that they enforce the law fairly and evenly when it comes to marijuana arrests, but the facts tell quite a different story. Black people are arrested at eight times the rate of whites when it comes to low-level marijuana charges in New York City. Similarly, Latinos in the city are arrested at five times the rate of whites over marijuana use. In the borough of Manhattan alone, the marijuana arrest rate for blacks is a whopping 15 times that of whites for the exact same crimes. So either the police are lying about disproportionately targeting blacks and Latinos for marijuana use, or they are just incredibly naive and ignorant. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that it is what is happening is the former, rather than the latter. Though they are trying to portray it as such, none of this is just the way things shake out—nor is it accidental.
According to recent New York Times reporting, police have come up with an official statement to justify these numbers.
With crime dropping and the Police Department under pressure to justify the number of low-level arrests it makes, a senior police official recently testified to lawmakers that there was a simple reason for the racial imbalance: More residents in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods were calling to complain about marijuana.
There is absolutely no proof that these claims by the NYPD are true. In fact, The Times writes that even in different neighborhoods where people call the police about marijuana at about the same rates, blacks and Latinos are still the ones who end up getting arrested. In other words, whether the neighborhood is predominantly black or Latino doesn’t make a difference at all when it comes to these arrests. From analysis of statistical data and interviews, the reporting confirms “uneven enforcement” by neighborhood and race.
In some neighborhoods, officers expected by their commanders to be assertive on the streets seize on the smell of marijuana and stop people who are smoking. In others, people smoke in public without fear of an officer passing by or stopping them. [...]
[officers] are historically assigned to black neighborhoods than would be expected based on crime rates, according to a study by Professor Fagan. And research has found “there is no good evidence” that marijuana arrests in New York City are associated with reductions in serious crime.
Any discussion on the policing of marijuana use by race is incomplete without also noting how blacks and Latinos are criminalized for smoking it while in certain states, whites people are considered entrepreneurs for selling it.
Legal cannabis is a multibillion-dollar industry and remains dominated by white men—who not only have money to invest but also a lack of criminal records that keep minorities from obtaining business licenses.
A 2016 story by BuzzFeed reminds us that blacks are all but excluded from the legalization boom due to the war on drugs. Moreover, their reporting showed that only about 1 percent of all marijuana dispensaries are owned by blacks. Writer Amanda Chicago Lewis explains:
At this rare and decisive moment in American history, state governments are literally handing control of a multibillion-dollar industry to a chosen few, creating wealth overnight. The pot trade has long been open to anyone with some seeds and some hustle, so there are more than enough cannabis experts out there to form a truly diverse industry — if only the laws weren’t systematically preventing thousands of qualified black people from participating.
While marijuana use is not legal in New York, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon has vowed to legalize it and work to clear the records of those impacted by low-level marijuana arrests. If she wins and keeps her promise, this will undoubtedly benefit blacks and Latinos who keep getting arrested at ridiculous rates for this crime. But it’s a long shot. And while it would be an excellent start, it won’t change the ways black and brown bodies are criminalized nor will it end the Trump administration’s newly revived war on drugs—which seeks to throw as many non-white bodies in prison as possible. Locking people up for marijuana has become yet another way to enact white supremacy in America. Until we address that as the underlying cause, these racial disparities related to drug use that are found all over our criminal justice system won’t improve.