Sharing the latest blog post from The AfroBlog on
http://afrodaddy.com Most people living in America who are even mildly socially aware know that many young Americans smoke weed. Recent studies by the National Institute on Drug Abuse show that nearly 20 million Americans over age 12 smoke weed on a monthly bais. Of this group the racial breakdown is pretty consistent across racial, ethnic and social lines as over 70% of surveyed people who admit to smoking weed are white people. What is not commonly known is that the rate of incarceration for marijuana possession and/or sale is extremely disproportionately slanted toward African Americans. In fact, marijuana use and possession has been used for the past 40 years as a primary excuse for rounding up millions of African Americans, incarcerating them and effectively removing them from the employment pool, dating pool, the political process and the power structure of America.
Since the inception of the so-called drug war in the 1970's America has been fighting a losing battle against the sale and use of drugs in this country. Part of the reason for this is that the government has been complicit in letting billions of dollars of drugs into this country unchecked. Reading the last two sentences leads one to ask the obvious question - If the US is trying to fight a war on drugs, why are so many drugs being allowed into this country? The answer is simple: incarceration and the prison system has become big business in America.
The Rockefeller Drug Laws, which were first introduced in New York in 1973 and soon spread to the rest of the country, created extremely harsh penalties for drug offenses including new marijuana laws and disproportionate punishment for drug offenses. During the first few years of adoption over 90% of the people incarcerated were minorities, with an overwhelming number of those incarcerated being African Americans for marijuana-related offenses. From the NYCLU:
In New York there were 886 persons incarcerated for drug offenses in 1980. Of these individuals, 32 percent were Caucasian; 38 percent were African American; and 29 percent were Latino.
20 years later, there were 10 times as many (8, 227) new commitments for drug offenses. Only 6 percent were Caucasian; 53 percent were African American; and 40 percent were Latino.
Clearly there was a war going on but it seemed to only be directed against black and brown men. So what exactly was the benefit of having all these brothers going to jail? The booming and recently privatized prison system needed citizens to fill its new jails.
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Posted By: Darrell Garrett
Monday, March 28th 2011 at 11:57AM
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