Pubdate: Sun, 02 Feb 2014
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Copyright: 2014 Detroit Free Press
Contact: http://www.freep.com/article/99999999/opinion04/50926009
Website: http://www.freep.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/125
Author: Bill Laitner, Detroit Free Press Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?275 (Cannabis - Michigan)

MORE BLACK LEADERS ARE SHIFTING THEIR VIEWS ON MARIJUANA

Inside the law offices of Cannabis Counsel in Detroit, where two
lawyers work full-time for clients fighting marijuana charges, 40
political activists gathered recently to cheer a candidate for U.S.
Congress.

They were eager to hear from state Sen. Vincent Gregory, and not just
because he supports their chief goal -- to ease laws against
marijuana. Gregory, a Democrat from Southfield, represents a
population the pro-marijuana crowd wants desperately to win over:
African-American leaders and policy makers.

"If we legalize this and tax it, it's a benefit to all," Gregory, a
retired Wayne County sheriff's detective, told the crowd, to cheers
and applause.

Pro-marijuana activists say they've long been frustrated that few
black leaders have publicly joined them in their efforts. But with a
majority of Americans in favor of more lenient laws for cannabis,
black leaders -- including President Barack Obama -- are relaxing
their stance against marijuana, breaking with their long tradition of
supporting the nation's 42-year-old war on drugs.

That sentiment is reflected in a resurging popularity of "The New Jim
Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness." Published in
2010, author Michelle Alexander explores the issue of race in
America's criminal justice system.

In addition, a nationwide study released last year by the American
Civil Liberties Union shows how laws against marijuana have had a
disproportionate effect on African Americans, putting far more of them
behind bars than their marijuana usage rates would predict. That
knowledge has suddenly made marijuana, for many black leaders, a civil
rights issue.

By the Numbers

Last fall, with no fanfare and little notice, the NAACP's national
board endorsed a pro-marijuana bill in Congress. The issue is still a
hot button with numerous religious leaders. Detroit's NAACP leaders,
led by the Rev. Wendell Anthony, did not respond to several inquiries
by the Free Press on the issue.

And many African-American leaders, especially religious ones, continue
to voice opposition to marijuana. But more of them are acknowledging a
major civil rights concern in the way drug laws are enforced.

The Rev. Charles Christian Adams, presiding pastor at Hartford
Memorial Baptist Church, a Progressive Baptist church of 7,000 members
on Detroit's west side headed by his father, says he opposes
legalization "especially in the city of Detroit, where there is such a
crime problem."

Adams, 47, said he overcame serious drug and alcohol problems two
decades ago, and he now serves on several boards of drug-abuse programs.

"Those of us in the treatment and prevention community feel marijuana
is a gateway drug (that) often leads people to use other illicit drugs
- -- heroin, crack, alcohol," said Adams.

The Rev. Michael Owens, immediate past president of the Council of
Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity, representing nearly 100
churches in metro Detroit, sounded similar themes, concluding: "I
think the sentiment among many of the (black) clergy is that we would
not favor legalized marijuana."

Yet, both Adams and Owens said they felt African Americans have been
unfairly targeted for arrest. For that reason, both said they favored
dramatically reduced penalties for minor marijuana offenses -- a
dramatic departure from the war on drugs. Their changing attitudes
spring from data showing that blacks are far more likely than whites
to be arrested, jailed and sent to prison for even simple possession
of marijuana.

In the nationwide study commissioned by the ACLU and released last
year, blacks in Michigan were found to be 3.3 times more likely to be
arrested for possession than whites, despite equal usage rates.
Similar racial disparities were charted across the country, as high as
8.3 times in Iowa, according to 2010 FBI statistics compiled by the
ACLU.

Life-Changing Charges

Leonia Lloyd has been a drug court judge at Detroit's 36th District
Court since 2002, sentencing a stream of low-level marijuana
defendants to her diversion program instead of jail.

In drug court, a defendant is typically given a sentence of probation
and required to meet regularly with a probation officer, perform
community service and undergo months of frequent drug testing.

"At least 30% of the people I get are strictly (charged with)
marijuana," said Lloyd, a board member of the National Association of
Drug Court Professionals. She said drug courts leave defendants poised
to succeed, and not branded with a label, because "here, everything is
expunged from your record."

And yet, just a single arrest for marijuana can start a trail of
Internet data that's readily available to employers, as well as to
college admissions officers and the military, said Zeke Edwards, lead
author of the 185-page, 50-state study by the ACLU called "The War on
Marijuana in Black and White."

Once anyone -- regardless of ethnicity -- is arrested even once for
possessing cannabis, "they've started a process that's going to affect
their job, their schooling, their career -- people get fired, get
kicked out of public housing or lose a scholarship," as documented in
the study, Edwards said.

In 2012, Detroiters voted with a 65% approval rate to allow possession
of up to an ounce of the drug by anyone older than 21 and on private
property. That proposal had city lawyers under former Mayor Dave Bing
and former City Council President Charles Pugh sparring with activists
for two years, trying to keep it off the ballot, before losing in the
Michigan Supreme Court.

But Detroit Police Chief James Craig said recently that his officers
won't honor the local ordinance.

"Federal law supersedes the local law," Craig said. Marijuana "is
still against the law in Detroit," he said.

That unyielding stance worries one Detroiter who is a state-approved
medical-marijuana provider and caregiver.

"It's been illegal for so long -- even people like myself who have the
legal license (for medical marijuana) in my pocket, you're still
worried, 'Oh my gosh, I wonder if the police are going to come in
here,' " said Joe White, 61, a retired physical education teacher for
Detroit Public Schools. White is a state-approved provider of medical
marijuana for his wife, Brenda White, whose pain and muscle spasms
went unrelieved by prescription drugs but are eased by medical pot, he
said.

As the lone African American on the board of Michigan NORML, the state
chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws,
White created a presentation he calls "The School to Prison Pipeline,"
dramatizing how marijuana arrests shunt young black Detroiters into
lives of alternating incarceration and unemployment.

Jail Instead of College

Nationally, momentum is growing rapidly among African-American leaders
for ending, if not the entire war on drugs, at least the one against
marijuana, said Neill Franklin, a retired major with the Maryland
State Police. Franklin is executive director of LEAP, or Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition, a Washington, D.C., organization of
former and current police officers "who support drug regulation rather
then prohibition," according to the group's website.

And in two recent interviews, including one with CNN that aired
Friday, President Barack Obama acknowledged that he smoked marijuana
in his youth. Obama told CNN that he objected to "the very heavy
criminal penalties for individual users that have been applied
unevenly, and in some cases, with a racial disparity."

Franklin travels the country representing LEAP.

"When I started speaking for LEAP in 2008, I saw very, very few black
folks in the audiences, and most of those were young people," said
Franklin, who is black.

"I also saw very few black leaders taking a similar position as me.
White leadership has really been running the show on drug policy
reform for a long time. So I recognized a void of black leadership
speaking out on an issue that so seriously affects the black
community," he said.

Franklin credits Alexander and her book "The New Jim Crow" for shaking
up the black establishment. And Alexander said she, too, has seen
attitudes shift.

"Middle-class white kids have been using and selling marijuana for
years and years, and people laughed about it," said Alexander, an Ohio
State University law professor. "It's dismissed as just their youthful
mistakes, as many of them go off to college and then well-paying jobs.
But the young black kids go off to jail. They're branded second-class
citizens for life."

Embracing Change

Alice Huffman, president of the California State Conference of the
NAACP, endorsed legalization of marijuana in 2010, even as faith-based
NAACP leaders in her state called for her resignation. Since then,
Huffman said, she has seen attitudes among NAACP leaders shift.

"For decades, we were oblivious to the destruction that the war on
drugs has been bringing to black communities," said Huffman. Black
leaders were blind to the fact that police "were targeting black and
brown people" when enforcing marijuana laws, said Huffman, who sits on
the national NAACP board and is the national group's criminal justice
chair.

Detroit school board President LaMar Lemmons, a longtime advocate of
decriminalizing marijuana, said that after failing for years, he's
finally starting to recruit allies among other black leaders.

"In our community, the war on marijuana has always been driven by the
church -- even if a family doesn't go to church, the preachers set the
tone for everybody," Lemmons said. Now, with change in the air,
Lemmons said he plans to oversee a conference of leaders in late
February at the Detroit Public Library to "set the black agenda for
our region." A major topic? Marijuana laws.

State Sen. Coleman Young II, D-Detroit, whose namesake father tried to
ease Michigan's marijuana laws as a state legislator 40 years ago, is
pushing a bill in Lansing to decriminalize possession of cannabis.
With marijuana views mellowing on both sides of the political aisle in
Lansing, Young's bill could pass later this year, turning possession
of the drug in Michigan into nothing more serious than a traffic ticket.

Over wine and cheese at the home-like offices of Cannabis Counsel,
attorney Matt Abel said he was buoyed by the growing tide of black
leaders embracing the change.

"For a long time, the black community didn't get it -- I see that
changing," said Abel, a white Detroiter who runs the statewide effort
to legalize marijuana. He added:

"To get this done, we are going to need the political support of a lot
of African Americans."

[sidebar]

RACIAL DISPARITY IN MARIJUANA ARRESTS

Marijuana arrests of African Americans far outpace those of white
Americans, even though usage rates are about the same for the two
groups, according to the annual National Survey on Drug Use and
Health, which queries more than 67,000 people. Nationwide, blacks are
3.7 times more likely than whites to be arrested for possession of
marijuana. In Michigan, they are 3.3 times more likely than whites to
be arrested.

Other states:

Iowa: 8.3

Ohio: 4.1

Texas: 2.3

Colorado: 1.9

Source - FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Data, 2010, compiled by ACLU. To
see full report, go to www.aclu.org and click on "key issues." 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D