Dan MLK: Konoplja in državljanske pravice

Vesel dan MLK!

Time to catastrophize just a bit. Last year v tem času, I kicked off this post by writing:

Če bi bil Martin Luther King mlajši danes živ, bi skoraj zagotovo zagovarjal konec vojne proti mamilom. Dr. King ni nikoli javno govoril o drogah ali konoplji posebej: leta 1968 je bil umorjen, dve leti preden je predsednik Nixon podpisal Zakon o nadzorovanih substancah (CSA). Vendar je dobro ugotovljeno, da je vojna proti drogam bila in je vojna proti manjšinam in temnopoltim. Je antiteza enakosti in pravičnosti. In še vedno je močan.

Things aren’t looking much better in 2023. Recently released FBI marijuana and drug crime datum, which are confusing, indicate that cannabis is still the drug war’s primary driver. This is true even if simple possession arrests lahko be decreasing. Conservatively, local law enforcement officials clocked over 170,000 arrests for possession of cannabis in 2021 (the most recent year of published statistics). Texas is the nation’s leading culprit, followed by Tennessee and North Carolina.

These arrests are not for cartel activity, or any form of distribution or marijuana “trafficking”. Many, many people are trafficking the plant nonetheless. My law firm has worked with thousands of them over the years. We’ve helped them acquire state and local licenses, raise money, buy and lease real estate, pay each other, sue each other, etc. They’ve got cart blanche; and very few of them are minorities or people of color.

The catastrophizing part comes in when you start to understand that the tide won’t go out anytime soon. Many of the bigger states have made their moves as to cannabis, and Congress and the Biden administration, including through the President’s recent pardons, have badly missed the mark. As I wrote last year:

I am terribly, terribly disappointed in our leadership on this. Most of our leaders are cowards, starting at the very top. On the campaign trail, Joe Biden pledged to “decriminalize the use of cannabis and automatically expunge all prior cannabis use convictions.” That promise sits moldering tukaj on the “Black America” page of his website.

Friends, I just checked and it’s still up. You can read it– after clicking through a donations request.

In any case, the chances of Biden living up to his promises, or of cannabis reform happening in the new Congress, seem like slim to none. This means we should brace for a half million or so more arrests over the next few years. Many of these arrests will be of people of color, walking around with joints and such in places like Texas and Tennessee and North Carolina.

The cognitive dissonance will continue to expand. States like New York and New Jersey, once marquee prosecutors of the drug war, have rolled out cannabis decriminalization and social equity programs that should put the Western states to shame. I doubt anyone will crack the social equity code on cannabis commerce anytime soon, but these overtures stand in stark relief to what we will continue to see in the backwaters. All the while, legal sales of cannabis will continue to march toward $ 80 milijarde v 2030.

I don’t mean to be all doom and gloom. I do mean to remember, though, that drug policy reform is a civil rights and social justice issue. Dr. King would have been all over this one.

The year is 2023 and it’s time to end the drug war, starting with cannabis.

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• vir: https://harrisbricken.com/cannalawblog/mlk-day-cannabis-and-civil-rights-2/