Will America see marijuana legalization in our lifetime?

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email
• Copy Link

  Link Copied

States start the ball rolling on decriminalization

Colorado and Washington broke new ground when voters in those states legalized recreational marijuana in the November election—a first in the nation.  States such as Oregon, California, Nevada, Rhode Island, Maine, Alaska and Vermont are likely to follow.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced legislation in January to decriminalize possession of small amounts of weed, a proposal which Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network and MSNBC said was “a step in the right direction.” 

Typically, marijuana arrests are a perverse byproduct of stop-and-frisk arrests, a policy which was struck down by a federal judge absent specific cause by policy to search a person. Since Mayor Michael Bloomberg came to office 11 years ago, 440,000 people have been arrested on marijuana possession, the most heavily charged offense ever.

“We have been convinced, given the data, that Stop and Frisk does not alleviate crime but instead increases the racial profiling exposure of mostly young blacks and Hispanics,” Sharpton said in a statement.

Pot putting black men behind bars

In 2011, over 50,000 arrests were made in New York City for small amounts of marijuana.  Half of the people arrested were under the age of 25, less than 10% had a criminal record, and 82 percent were black or Latino.

This practice of stopping black and Latino young men has nothing to do with fighting crime, experts say, but has everything to do with racial profiling.  The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the case of Floyd vs. City of New York, which alleges unreasonable, unjustified, race-based stop-and-frisk tactics against young men of color by the New York City Police Department. 

An expert in the Floyd case, Dr. Jeffrey Fagan–professor of law and public health at Columbia University and a Yale research scholar–found that race was the guiding factor in many police stops, rather than whether there was a reasonable suspicion the suspect committed a crime, or was in possession of a weapon or drug contraband such as marijuana.  In nearly half of documented stops, police justify their actions based on the vague term “furtive stops.”  Meanwhile, police made over half of the stops on the grounds that it was a “high crime area,” even when crime in the given neighborhood was lower than average.   

“Accordingly, the NYPD stop and frisk tactics produce seizures of offenders, weapons or contraband that are well below what we might expect were we to stop citizens at random,” Fagan reported. “In other words, the NYPD continues to produce ‘hit rates’ that not only are no better than chance, but appear to be far worse.”

What will Obama do?

But given the evidence of the harm caused by the current criminalization of marijuana, not to mention the Pew study, will President Obama act?  Former president Jimmy Carter has stated he is in favor of decriminalizing marijuana, and even advocated for it during his presidency, and Bill Clinton has all but supported such a policy on the grounds the war on drugs has not worked.

And while Obama came to office with promises of reforming the nation’s drug policy, he simply has not delivered in the eyes of his critics, and has not utilized the power of his office to change bad policy.

In December 2012, Obama told Barbara Walters that he does not support widespread legalization “at this point,” but sought a middle ground given shifting public sentiment and fiscal concerns.  The president said, “it would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational [marijuana] users in states that have determined that it’s legal.” 

“The president’s statement about not targeting individual marijuana users doesn’t mark a shift in policy. The federal government rarely goes after individual users,” Angell said. Angell believes Obama is finding an easy way out and attempting to pass the buck to Congress, when the nation’s chief executive actually has the power to change the law through the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. 

“The real question is whether the Obama administration will try to prevent voter-approved marijuana sales systems from being enacted or if they will force individual users to buy marijuana from the black market, where much of the profits go to cartels and gangs that kill people,’ he added.

So will the president evolve on drug policy, much in the way he evolved on the issue of gay marriage?  Time will tell, but he certainly has an opening, not to mention a second term and no reelection worries hanging over his head.

Follow David A. Love on Twitter at @davidalove