by Britton Loftin
California faces an election climate unlike any other in the United States this November. The citizens of California will elect their statewide officers, a U.S. Senator, a slate of U.S. Congressmen and Congresswomen and, decide whether it will legalize Marijuana for personal use or maintain its current status of medicinal use only. The turnout in California is sure to be high (no not "high"), but voters have a host of reasons to come out in large numbers to cast their vote.
Proposition 19, also known as the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, is on the statewide ballot November 2nd as an initiative statue.
In 1972, Californians rejected a previous Proposition 19 ballot initiative to legalize marijuana by a vote of 66% to 33%.
Fast-forward to 2010. According to the study "Targeting Blacks for Marijuana" published by the Drug Policy Alliance, African Americans in California's 25 largest counties use marijuana at rates much lower than Whites but, are arrested at a rate at least double that of whites. African Americans were arrested at a rate four times the amount of Whites in Los Angeles County. Further, are you ready for this? In San Diego, African Americans are 365 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than Whites!
The current District Attorney of San Francisco, Kamala Harris, also an African American candidate running as the Democratic nominee for California Attorney General on the November 2nd ballot, has stated that she is against legalizing recreational marijuana. Her campaign spokesperson stated that, ""Harris supports the legal use of medicinal marijuana but does not support anything beyond that." On her campaign website District Attorney Harris promotes her success in high conviction rates of drug offenses for the City of San Francisco.
California's two United State Senators, Barbara Boxer and Senator Diane Feinstein, have all voiced their opposition for the bill.
California's NAACP President Alice Huffman stated, "The war on drugs is a failure and disproportionately targets young men and women of color, particularly African-American males."
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a national black police officers association, stated it is endorsing Proposition 19 on the November ballot. "When I was a cop in Baltimore, and even before that when I was growing up there, I saw with my own eyes the devastating impact these misguided marijuana laws have on our communities and neighborhoods," stated Neill Franklin, Executive Director. "But it's not just in Baltimore, or in Los Angeles: Prohibition takes a toll on people of color across the country."
It is evident that society continues to "look the other way" as more minorities are wrongly targeted for minor drug offenses. Who benefits? Government officials boasting of incarceration rates as platforms to run for higher offices? A correctional system that will never be short of people to "rehabilitate"? Or, a class and culture of people overly targeted for prosecution and incarceration?
