By Lynda Garcia, Soros Fellow, Criminal Law Reform Project, ACLU at 11:49am
We know that the War on Marijuana unnecessarily drags hundreds of thousands of people into the criminal justice system every year for having marijuana. And, because of a new ACLU report, we know that it is Blacks who are disproportionately arrested– despite the fact that Blacks and whites use marijuana at comparable rates.
But something—or someone—is missing here: Latinos.
By Ezekiel Edwards, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project at 10:27am
Marijuana has become the drug of choice for police departments nationwide. According to The War on Marijuana in Black and White, released today, police made over 8 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, and marijuana arrests now account for half of all drug arrests in America. Almost 90% of these are for possession – which means that thousands of people have been unnecessarily ensnared in our criminal justice system just for having marijuana.
By Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project at 2:16pm
Patricia Spottedcrow of Oklahoma made headlines in 2010 when she was sentenced to 12 years in prison for her first criminal offense: the sale of a $31 bag of marijuana to an undercover informant. The senseless severity of her sentence caught the attention of advocates who quickly moved to support Spottedcrow, spawning a grassroots uprising that led to a highly unusual decrease in her sentence and, ultimately, to her early release on parole.
We've told you a few times about Florida's horrible new law that drug tests all families applying for cash benefit welfare applicants. The law, which went into effect July 1, makes applicants front the cost of the drug test and reimburses individuals if they test negative.
The ACLU and others predicted this program would be a failure and cost the state of Florida much more money than they would save. Guess what? In just the few weeks that the program has been in effect we have been proven right.
Over 300 economists, including three Nobel Laureates, recently signed a petition that encourages the president, Congress, governors and state legislatures to carefully consider marijuana legalization in America. The petition draws attention to an article by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, whose findings highlight the substantial cost-savings our government could incur if it were to tax and regulate marijuana, rather than needlessly spending billions of dollars enforcing its prohibition.
A recent study from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) demonstrates that decriminalization of marijuana can actually improve our children’s futures while saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
In 2011, Senate Bill 1449 was implemented, which reduced the punishment for simple marijuana possession from a misdemeanor criminal offense to a civil infraction punishable by a fine of no more than $100. Data from the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center for 2011 reveals an impressive 20 percent decrease in overall youth arrests in the state compared to the previous year, and a 60 percent decrease in marijuana arrests. The CJCJ analysis determined that the “largest contributor to [the overall] decrease was a drop of 9,000 in youths’ low-level marijuana possession arrests” since the passage of SB 1449.
