Despite an increase in the decriminalization of marijuana across states, inherent systemic issues must be addressed to truly improve racial justice for minorities. 

Marijuana has had a rocky history in the US, prominently intertwined with racial justice issues that disproportionately affect Black and Latino communities. The criminalization of weed has skyrocketed the incarceration rates, especially for the African American community. In 1980, about 41,000 people were incarcerated for drug crimes, according to the Sentencing Project. In 2014, that number was about 488,400 — a 1,000 percent increase.  

During the 1970s, President Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs to eradicate illicit drug use in the US, contributing to mass incarceration in the US. 

Black Americans are arrested for cannabis offenses at a rate of nearly four to one, compared to whites despite cannabis usage rates between whites and non-whites being similar. And in a nation with nearly 700,000 arrests each year, these policies have an immense impact. Despite recent efforts of decriminalization and legalization of marijuana in many states, the real issue is a lack of true reform in the criminal justice system. 

Current Efforts Regarding Decriminalization Fall Short 

Over the past several years, states and localities have passed legalization and decriminalization reforms to rein in such arrest numbers. In legalized states such as Colorado, arrests have fallen dramatically. However, racial disparities in arrests have changed little in many such places. Legalization or decriminalization are steps in the right direction; however, such policies only help to fix the present and future and fail to address past records of marijuana possession. 

Today, over-criminalized communities continue to suffer from the fallout, even in states that have legalized marijuana and seen dramatic drops in the number of people arrested for marijuana crimes. Legalization has not eradicated the rate at which Black and Latinx people are arrested for marijuana offenses in these states, because marijuana is still illegal at the federal level. In fact, many states have seen an even steeper rise in the percentage of Black and Latinx people impacted by marijuana arrests. Two years after decriminalization in Washington D.C., a Black person is 11 times more likely than a white person to be arrested for the illegal public use of marijuana.  

Even as many states move toward legalization, drug-related violations were the most frequent cause for arrest in the U.S. in 2018. Nearly 40 percent of those arrests are for marijuana possession alone, according to federal data. Black people make up 27 percent of drug arrests, but only 13 percent of the country. 

Two reports, published by the American Civil Liberties Union and a team of researchers from Stanford University and New York University respectively, analyzed different sets of police data and came to similar conclusions. Despite legalization, minorities are still disproportionately searched and arrested for marijuana-related offenses.

The university researchers looked at data from about 100 million traffic stops conducted by more than 50 state patrol agencies and municipal police departments across the country between 2011 and 2018.

The analysis found that police were less likely to conduct searches for contraband during traffic stops in states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use. Additionally, after cannabis was legalized, the portion of stops that resulted in either a drug-related infraction or misdemeanor fell substantially in Colorado and Washington.

Despite the overall decline in vehicle searches, the report found evidence of racial profiling. Police subjected more black and Hispanic drivers to searches than white drivers in Colorado and Washington, the report said, adding that the barometer for vehicle searches was much lower for individuals of color.

There seems to be some level of bias built into the criminal justice system that continues to permeate even after the decriminalization of marijuana, whether it be individual racial biases among police officers, or how police are disproportionately deployed in minority communities, allegedly because they have higher levels of crime.

Important Steps Towards Racial Justice to Further Decriminalization 

Current decriminalization laws alone cannot allow for meaningful systemic change and worthwhile racial justice reforms for minorities. The future of cannabis policy in the United States must include expungement for prior offenses of marijuana (expungement keeps the record of your arrest and/or court case out of the public record) and more comprehensive efforts to help the communities hurt by the war on drugs. Legalizing cannabis doesn’t undo past arrests, and record expungement doesn’t make up for the years and decades of fewer educational, employment, and other related opportunities as a result of that drug arrest. 

As states legalize cannabis or seek to adjust their existing cannabis legalization policies, there are a few areas in which policy can help those most profoundly impacted by the war on drugs. First, there must be an effort to retrain police, post-legalization in ways that help address existing and ongoing racial disparities. Police departments can use changes to cannabis laws as an ideal opportunity to address some of the behaviors, choices, and biases that contribute to inexcusable disparities that exist between minorities’ and white’s arrest rates.

Social equity programs can help rectify the damage caused to these communities after years of disparate marijuana enforcement measures. In Long Beach, California, social equity programs have greatly helped business owners have equal opportunity in the cannabis industry Specifically, by providing assistance for loans, grants, business trainings, and other resources, these equity programs can help individuals from disproportionately impacted communities enter the legal marijuana industry and sustain businesses. 

The Center for American Progress has called for the use of marijuana-related revenue to fund the creation of public sector jobs for people in communities most affected by harsh marijuana enforcement. Reinvestment programs can help reverse these harms by providing an opportunity to address the needs of the communities most affected by marijuana enforcement and by implementing economic opportunities for future economic success.

It is important to address, combat, and eliminate discriminatory policing practices and structural racial bias at every step of our criminal legal system. Legalization measures must have equity as a vital component to avoid continuing to harm certain and to address the years of hardship and stigma that criminalizing marijuana has wrought.