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Borough President Eric Adams, Assemblyman Karim Camra, and other advocates stood on the steps at Brooklyn Borough Hall last Friday to applaud District Attorney Ken Thompson’s proposal to stop prosecuting people arrested for possessing small amounts of marijuana. Deniece Kinash, Coordinator of ‘New York State Committee To Legalize Marijuana’ said many young black members from her organization have stories similar to Alfredo Carrasquillo of Drug Policy Alliance. Carrasquillo spoke about getting stopped by police who appeared out of ‘nowhere and order him to put’ his hands on the wall. When the cops search him they found ‘a little weed’. It was enough to get a weekend in jail and a misdemeanor on his record. A 2011 report by the Drug Policy Alliance states that black and Latino men are disproportionately arrested for marijuana possession due to the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy under Bloomberg, which unfairly targeted them. Blacks are 3.7 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana than whites in Brooklyn—and 13 times the rate in some areas.

Marijuana should be decriminalized, if not legalized and taxed, just like alcohol said Kinash. One reason D.A. Thompson was decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana is so that individuals ‘especially young people of color, do not become unfairly’ put in jail for possession of marijuana.
Legalize Marijuana will take a large source of illegal money away from the gangs and this will stop the violence over control of street corners Kinash said. “That means we must move toward legalizing, regulating, and taxing marijuana”, she said. Michelle Alexander author of ‘The New Jim Crow’ made a similar point last week. She said “White Men Get Rich from Legal Pot, Black Men Stay in Prison.” TV news talking heads are always reporting about the exploding pot market in Colorado. You will see the faces of the movement for legalization of marijuana are primarily white and male. Meanwhile, many of the more than 210,000 people who were arrested for marijuana possession in Colorado between 1986 and 2010 are Black according to a report from the Marijuana Arrest Research Project. Thousands of black men and boys still sit in prisons for possession of the very plant that’s making those white guys on TV rich. It’s time for a change Kinash said.

CONTACT: DENNIS LEVY /AMERICANPOTSMOKERS@GMAIL.COM