Blacks four times more likely than whites to be arrested for drugs

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There’s a war goin’ on outside that no black smoker is safe from…

Study Shows Blacks Four Times More Likely To Be Arrested For Drug Possession

The U.S. War on Mary Jane is not just costly, time-consuming and unnecessary — it’s also racially biased, according to a new report.

In recent years, several states have passed laws that decriminalized Mary Jane, and a majority of Americans now support legalizing the drug. Yet between 2001 and 2010, there were over 8 million Mary Jane arrests in the U.S. What’s worse, the authorities making the arrests were targeting black Americans far more than whites.

According to a new study from the American Civil Liberties Union, which tracked Mary Jane arrests by race and county in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, black and white Americans use Mary Jane at about the same rate. However, blacks were nearly four times as likely than whites to be arrested on charges of Mary Jane possession in 2010.

In Washington D.C., Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, blacks were 7.5 to 8.5 times more likely than whites to be arrested for possessing Mary Jane.

Most of the people being arrested weren’t drug kingpins. Fifty-two percent of all drug arrests in 2010 were for Mary Jane, and according to the ACLU’s analysis, most of the arrestees were in possession of small amounts of the drug.

Having a black president hasn’t eased this racial disparity, either. During President Barack Obama’s first three years in office, the arrest rate for Mary Jane possession was about 5 percent higher than the average rate under President George W. Bush, The New York Times reported.

So not even a former piff-puffin’ black President can save folks from unfair police practices.