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The Marijuana Policies of
Ohio Taskforce, chaired by former Cincinnati prosecutor Joe
Deters, released its “research-based public policy review
and discussion” regarding the impact of legalizing marijuana
use in Ohio. As a member of the Taskforce, I was present
when the findings were presented last week at The Ohio State
University’s Moritz College of Law.
Much of the report’s content
is derived from and/or aligns directly with well-regarded
sources such as prestigious scholar Michelle Alexander’s The
New Jim Crow and The ACLU’s outstanding 2013 study War On
Marijuana in Black and White.
So we’ve already known for a
long time from reliable sources that the U.S. has spent in
excess of one trillion dollars, fighting a 40-year failed
“war on drugs,” resulting in 40 million arrests with no
marked effect on the use or availability of drugs.
We also know that the
consequences of this “explicitly racial” political strategy
have been life changing to young people of color and their
communities. The impact of this strategic street-level
enforcement of low-level drug laws has directly led to the
evolution of communities where female-headed, single-parent
families have become the norm, and destroyed public health,
economic opportunity and the social fabric in communities of
color.
Is criminalization worth the
risk?
Although critics claim that
legalization would amount to granting tacit approval, which
would encourage people to use drugs, the available evidence
shows that prohibition and criminalization does not really
have an impact on deterring people from using.
There are 25 million current
users of marijuana nationally and nearly 800,000 have been
arrested (52 percent young men aged 15-24). Although
African Americans use marijuana at roughly the same rate as
others they are arrested four times more frequently.
“The biased enforcement
combined with the terrifying consequences and penalties on
the lives of people of color,” says Task Force member Mike
Thomas, “means that criminalization is having a targeted
effect on certain individuals and communities and is having
a devastating effect.”
One study showed that girls
who went into the juvenile justice system were five times
more likely to die by age 29 than those who did not. With
youth of color experiencing disparate minority contact with
the criminal justice system, the relevant policy question
becomes “is a few grams of a particular plant worth all of
the direct and collateral consequences to communities of
color?”
Where do we go from here?
With a lot of misinformation
and disinformation flying from camps on both sides of the
issue, my objective in serving on the taskforce was not to
make a theological or moral judgment, but to examine how
marijuana legalization might affect our community.
My conclusions?
Public policy and public
health in particular, are about being practical.
My personal and professional
philosophy aligns perfectly with Thomas, former chairman,
Board of Governors of the Cuyahoga County Community Mental
Health, who says, “Sometimes public health requires keeping
people healthy in spite of behavior you might not like.
Practicality is the principle that underlies a lot of public
health programs like contraception and sex education.”
So, while one may not
advocate or condone what people are doing, there is
certainly a need to keep them healthy in the meantime. “When
the behavior of people doesn’t respond to your permission,
which seems to be the case,” Thomas continues, “the public
has a need to be practical. It also needs to be brutally
honest and reality based.”
Yet, if we are going to “keep
it real,” we must take into account a black community who,
in the words of Lalah Hathaway, is tired of elected
officials:
“Telling me what you gon’ do;
pointless cause you don’t
come through;
wasted breath and words on
you;
I’ve done all I can do.”
The plan promises $7 billion in revenue and more than 16,000
direct jobs that pay a living wage and nearly 9,800
additional indirect jobs should ResponsibleOhio’s proposed
constitutional amendment appear on the November ballot and
wins the approval of voters. The African-American community
has a degree of skepticism whether it will actually benefit
from an economic standpoint.
Others, from a social justice
perspective, complain
that “it is really foul that so many of our brothers and
sisters have been incarcerated for marijuana possession
until *somebody* decided that they wanted to turn it into a
legitimate industry. So, "we" are criminalized, off ramped
for developing the underground trafficking systems... then
"they" come along, take them over with *clean records* and
are designated profitable business men and women.”
It is
inevitable that legalization of marijuana will eventually
take place. The conversation now, even among anti-personal
drug use proponents, needs to be about how we can be
practical, keep our people safe and rebuild communities of
color devastated by the politics of “explicitly racist” U.S.
drug policies.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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