A Green New Deal

People of color were targeted by the war on drugs. They must benefit from marijuana legalization

- Crystal Peoples-stokes

I’M OFTEN ASKED WHY I LINK the legalization of adult-use cannabis with social and economic justice for communities of color.

My answer is simple: Black and Latinx people, who make up those communities, have suffered the most under cannabis prohibition and the racially disparate enforcement of the “war on drugs.”

To understand how this has occurred, a historical context is necessary. John Ehrlichman, who was counsel and assistant to the president for domestic affairs for President Nixon, told Dan Baum of Harper’s in 1994, “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the anti-war left and black people... We couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and the blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.”

That was the beginning of what would become a decades-long assault on black and Latinx communities across America.

We know that people of color have been disproportionately impacted by biased enforcement of drug laws. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, blacks are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession nationwide than whites. This is despite consistent data that demonstrates white Americans self-report cannabis use at equal or greater rates.