Affirmative action for arrests.
WASHINGTON (CIRCA) — Presidential hopeful Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is reintroducing one of the longest-standing cannabis-related acts in Congress, the Marijuana Justice Act.
The act would remove cannabis from schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act — thereby allowing states to make their own decisions about regulating, taxing or outlawing cannabis — all with the blessing of the federal government.
States that decide not to enter into the legal market would need to reduce the racial disparities in their marijuana-related arrests or face penalties.
According to the ACLU, blacks and whites use cannabis at a similar rate. But people of color are arrested nearly four times as often as whites for that use.
A study published by the ACLU in 2010 stated that nationwide, blacks were almost four times as likely as whites to be arrested for marijuana possession. It also said that some localities are worse than others; in Iowa in 2010, for example, blacks were 8.34 percent more likely to be arrested than whites, and in Washington, D.C., they were 8.05 percent more likely. In fact, in D.C. that year, according to the ACLU, the arrest rate for whites was 185 per 100,000, while it was 1,489 per 100,000 for blacks.
“Across the river in Arlington, Virginia,” pointed out Justin Strekal, policy director of pro-cannabis advocacy group NORML, during an interview in Washington, D.C, “the racial disparity of the enforcement of marijuana criminalization is eight to one.”
Under Booker’s bill, states that don’t legalize marijuana but do continue to show data that maintains racial disparities like this will be penalized. In the 2017 version of this act, the penalties included ineligibility for federal funding for the construction or staffing of a prison or jail, or for certain programming within the jail system such as drug addiction treatment.