DPA/NAACP STUDIES SHOWS RACIAL NATURE OF MARIJUANA ARRESTS

A study conducted by the Drug Policy Alliance and the California State Conference of the NAACP found that minorities were significantly more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession in twenty-five cities in California than Whites. ¹

The study found that African Americans are arrested four to twelve times as often as Whites.This happens despite the fact that Whites way outnumber African Americans in each of the cities and Federal government statistics show that more Whites use marijuana than African Americans. For example in Los Angeles seven times as many African Americans as Whites are arrested for possession of marijuana. While African Americans are 9.6 per cent of the population in Los Angeles nearly 35 per cent of those arrested for marijuana possession are African American. Likewise in San Diego, 6.5 per cent of the population is African American, but they comprise 29.5 per cent of the possession arrests. In the City of Torrence African Americans are only two per cent of the population but they account for 24 per cent of the marijuana possession arrests. In Sacramento 13.7 per cent of the population is African American and they are the subjects of over half of the possession arrests. In none of the cities examined did the African American percentage of the population begin to reach the percentage of marijuana possession arrests.

As Michelle Alexander stated in The New Jim Crow, the authors of the Drug Policy Alliance study argue that the extraordinary number of arrests of African Americans is not caused by the racism of individual officers. ² Rather it is a systematic result of police being assigned primarily to high crime areas where indigent people, often minorities, live.

In a postnote the authors point out that possession of marijuana is scheduled to become an infraction next year in California and that legalization is on next month’s ballot. But the authors point out that making marijuana possession an infraction is unlikely to change the racial composition of the arrests and that only legalization can change that. However marijuana legalization will not change the racial nature of arrests for other drug crimes. The penalties for crack cocaine, under Federal law, remain much higher than the penalties for powder cocaine despite the fact that African American arrests for crack cocaine are significantly greater than the percentage of African Americans who use crack and White arrests for crack are much lower than the percentage of Whites who use crack. ³